


Hollowpoint

by silkinsilence



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Discussions of Suicide, F/F, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Parent/Child Incest, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Self-Harm, Stalking, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in the dark, Azula takes a leap of faith. Mai tries to catch her. Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4249794">Molotov</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! As the summary says, this is a sequel to [Molotov](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4249794). I don't really want to call it the sequel to Molotov. It's more like...fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is a story that's been bouncing around in my head almost since I finished Molotov, and I just got around to writing it this summer. In essence, this piece, in conjunction with Molotov, forms most of my modern Maizula headcanons.
> 
> It was supposed to be a oneshot, but it's looking to be around 30,000 words, so I've decided to split it into three chapters. This is (obviously) the first of three.
> 
> I'm not sure how I feel about this piece, to be honest. Part of the reason I hesitate in calling it the sequel to Molotov is because I don't feel it really lives up to Molotov. But that could just be me; I am very fond of Molotov.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, and please tell me what you think.

 

 

* * *

_"and we couldn't bring the columns down_  
_yeah, we couldn't destroy a single one_  
_and the history books forgot about us_  
_and the bible didn't mention us,_  
_not even once"_

_-"samson," regina spektor_

* * *

She was almost home when her cell phone rang.

She expected a wrong number or maybe work. But when she saw the name on the screen, Mai felt a sudden tightness in her chest. It was shock and pain and nostalgia. It was confusion. What could she want after all this time? It had been two years since she had seen or spoken to the person on the other end of the line.

Mai had contemplated deleting the contact more times than she could count. Every time, something had stopped her. Maybe she was just tossing a bone to her memories. Maybe part of her, the part that had neither forgotten nor healed, had been hoping for something like this.

Her thumb hovered over the green button for several infinitely long seconds. She told herself she could decline it. But she wouldn't.

"Hello?"

"Mai?"

She sounded a little different over the phone, but _God that voice was saying her name_ and the intervening time might as well not have passed for the effect it had on Mai.

"Azula?" The constricting feeling reached her lungs and her throat and her heart. Two years since she'd said that name. Two years since she'd seen her for the last time. And all the grief and confusion and helplessness was rearing its head again. The phone was not enough. Mai wanted to see her. Mai wanted to touch her. She didn't think she had ever stopped wanting that.

"You answered. I didn't know if..." Azula's voice trailed off. She sounded weird, Mai realized. Dreamy. Much less intense than usual. Surely the time hadn't changed her so much.

"Well, it was you." Mai closed her eyes and hated herself for saying that. She'd gotten away. She'd gotten out of it. She shouldn't still be thinking of her like that.

"I'm flattered." Azula laughed. Her laugh, too, sounded weaker. Mai started wondering. Her mind was racing ahead of her.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes...yes...I don't know." Azula sounded surprised, at herself or at the question, like she also would have liked to know the answer.

"Azula?" The unease. The dread. The horror. Mai remembered all of these, too. She remembered the secrets she had kept for Azula. "What is it?"

Azula took a slow breath and let it out before answering. "I've done something _horrible,_ Mai." Her voice was still dreamlike, her tone all wrong for the words she was speaking.

"What do you mean?" Mai was gripping her phone tighter and tighter. Unbidden, anger had awoken underneath her other emotions. What right did Azula have to call her? Why did Mai have to tolerate this? It was _over._

What had she been hoping for, anyway, some kind of reconciliation?

"I've...look, Mai, I'm very sorry to trouble you, but could you come over?"

"To your _house_?" It was disbelief now. What _was_ this?

"Yes."

Mai tried not to think about what the invitation meant. She didn't want to think about the things she had let Azula do to her. She had cut her ties. Azula had twined her about her fingers and then discarded her. Mai shouldn't have wanted her. She shouldn't have answered the phone. But still she remembered what it had been like to be with Azula, to see her smile and hear every word that fell from her caustic lips, to taste heaven on her ashen tongue and ascend there when Azula was between her legs.

"I'm in Tokyo," she said finally. "Can't you call Ty Lee?"

"She doesn't..." Azula paused, audibly swallowed. "Mai, _please._ "

Kyoto was three and half hours and a good ten thousand yen away and Mai was supposed to work tonight and they hadn't spoken in two years and Azula had told her she meant nothing to her and _none of that mattered at all_ because Mai had been lost from the instant she had seen the name on her screen and _Azula was begging her._

"I'm on my way," she said.

* * *

She hadn't been back in Kyoto since all of it had happened. The city felt forbidding now. She didn't belong here anymore. Getting off the train and remembering her life here felt dangerous. How easy it would be to slip back into old habits, old chains.

She could see her parents. They were almost certainly living in the same house. Tom-Tom would be old enough to start school soon, wouldn't he? A pang of sadness shot through Mai at the thought of her brother. He was one thing she'd regretted leaving behind. The last time she had spoken to her mother, a terse phone conversation at the New Year, she'd asked if Michi might send her some pictures of Tom-Tom.

_"I don't think that would really be appropriate, Mai. If you hadn't run away, you'd still be able to see the real thing. And he misses his big sister."_

Even across time and distance, her mother still had the incredible ability to make Mai feel horribly guilty. She had spent the first day of the new year brooding and alone and wondering if she'd made the wrong decision.

But she hadn't. It had been right. Maybe it was the first right decision she had ever actually made.

Now she was back again.

The train route was familiar to her. She had only been to Azula's house once before, and yet she remembered. She kind of hated that. Even when she left the station, when it was dark and she had to walk by the light of the streetlamps, she thought she knew the way.

She paid an undue amount of attention to her feet and the cracks in the pavement. Her bag swung from her shoulder, heavy and unwieldy. She focused very hard on everything around her, because she did not want to think about where she was going.

Despite her best efforts, stray thoughts still pinged through her mind, bringing the rising tide of anxiety to the forefront once more. _What if Ozai's there? What if this is all some stupid joke? What if it's_ not _some stupid joke? What if she wants to make up?_

Then she was there already.

She stood and stared at the hulking menace of a house. There wasn't a single light on in any of its windows. It was late, but it wasn't _that_ late. There was a car in the driveway. What was she about to encounter? Was any of this worth it?

She could turn around and buy another ten-thousand yen ticket back to Tokyo and forget about all of this. And her pounding heart told her that would be the safest course of action, even as her feet moved her up the driveway and toward the front door.

She extended one shaking hand toward the bell. She had to close her eyes when she pushed it.

The sound seemed to ring in her ears even after she'd lifted her finger. Mai waited what seemed to have been a very long time but could only have been seconds. Her breath was irregular, her heart seemed to have pounded its way out of her chest, and she had absolutely no idea what to expect on the other side of the door.

She was psyching herself up to push it again when the door opened.

Azula had not changed.

Mai's worries were suddenly inconsequential. It didn't matter why she was here or if this was all an elaborate prank. Azula was standing in front of her, as real and solid and untouchable as the day they had parted, sharp eyes and silky hair and all the grace of a monarch.

Her expression was perfectly blank, but when she saw who was standing on her doorstep, her lips split and her face crumpled into a desperate sort of smile.

"You came," she breathed.

"I said I would," Mai said. She thought her heart might have stopped altogether. She didn't know if she had ever seen such an expression on a person's face before. Certainly Azula had never looked at her like that.

"You did," Azula said. She hovered in the doorway. Her eyes were distant. Her lips parted slightly. Mai waited, but Azula didn't move aside.

"Uh...can I come in?"

"Do you want to come in?"

Maybe it was the nearest streetlight, or maybe Mai's initial awe had faded, but she saw now that Azula did not look as she normally did...normally had. Her hair was slightly unruly. The color of her lips was smeared. But most disturbing was the vacancy in her eyes.

The question, too, was jarring.

"I came all this way, didn't I?"

"Don't you remember the last time you were here?"

Of course Mai remembered. How could she forget? The jumble of emotions she had experienced then was not so different from what she was feeling now. That time, though, there had been much more pain, and Azula had been smiling.

"Maybe I shouldn't have called."

"Azula, come on." Mai tried not to sound annoyed, but it was difficult. It was late, she was tired, and she'd just spent hours on the train.

"Fine. Come in." Azula stepped back to let her enter. Her eyes finally focused in on Mai, but they still had that unsettling vacant expression.

The house was utterly dark and silent. There wasn't a single light on anywhere. Mai followed close behind Azula lest she trip over some stray piece of furniture. All of it was very odd, and she found herself growing warier with each second that passed. There was a very strange, unpleasant odor hanging in the air, one that Mai didn't grow accustomed to no matter how many times she breathed it in.

The living room's broad glass windows let light from the street spill in as they were walking through, and for the first time Mai noticed that the dark patches across Azula's pale shirt, which she'd assumed to be a pattern, were some sort of discoloration.

"Azula, what is that?"

Azula stopped and half-turned, and realization struck Mai like lightning.

"Oh, my God. That's not...Azula, tell me that's not blood."

She turned all the way around then. For the first time she was wearing one of those smiles Mai had become so accustomed to, really less a smile and more of a smirk. But the furrow of her eyebrows and the look in her eyes made it different. They made it horrifying.

"I told you I'd done something horrible."

"Are you _okay?_ " Mai reached out her hands without thinking, but Azula wasn't within reach.

She shook her head, still smiling that awful smile. "It's not mine."

Mai was starting to feel nauseous. This was so much like the last time. She could feel that awful apprehension building within her again. Azula held truths that Mai was neither prepared for nor desiring of, and unless she turned and ran _now_ she would regret it.

"Whose?" she asked, barely more than a whisper.

Azula just turned and kept walking. And as much as Mai wanted to run for the door and leave all of this behind, she followed.

She'd assumed they were heading for Azula's bedroom, but her host bypassed the stairs and entered the kitchen. The awful smell was getting worse and worse, and Mai had a very grim suspicion now about exactly what it was.

There were no lights on in the kitchen, either, but Mai could still see the vast black stain on the tile floor. She could still see the huddled mass, dark suit and white skin and _wide, staring eyes—_

A hand flew to cover her mouth, but it made no difference. She retched. She thought she might have heard Azula make a noise of disgust, or perhaps it was only her imagination.

When she managed to straighten again, bile dripping from her nose and lips, one grace was that the stench of vomit managed to conceal the stink of the corpse in front of her. Mai's first instinct was to apologize for the mess, as if the splatter of her stomach's contents across the floor was a worse mess than the gruesome sight before her.

Azula, lips curled with distaste, handed her a towel. Mai silently wiped her face and steeled herself for a second look.

Ozai's mouth was sagging open. His skin looked ashen, grey, though perhaps that was just the dim lighting. All of the grandeur with which he'd carried himself was gone. His limbs were stiff and contorted where he'd fallen.

"Holy—"

Mai didn't know what to say or think. A sort of mindless excitement was thrilling through her. This couldn't be real. It was way too fucking out there. Azula's call, the train trip, and now staring at the corpse of the man she'd imagined killing herself so many times.

She fumbled for the light switch. The brightness was harsh and sudden against the shadows of the house, but she blinked away the stars from her eyes. Somehow color only made the scene that much worse. Her stomach lurched again.

Ozai's shirt was stained dark, dark red. With the contrast of color, Mai could see the handle of a knife still buried in his stomach.

She looked over at Azula again. She was ostensibly watching Mai, but her eyes retained that awful staring look that made it seem as if she wasn't actually seeing anything.

She was gorgeous in proper lighting. But that wasn't important.

"You killed him. You really killed him!" Mai was laughing. She could imagine the fucker staring at the knife sticking out of him, unable to believe what his daughter had done to him. Maybe in his last moments he'd realized what he'd done to her. Maybe he'd felt sorry for it. God, she hoped he'd suffered. And how could she do anything but laugh when there was no question in her mind that he absolutely, unequivocally deserved it?

"Mai," Azula said, very quietly, and Mai turned to her. Azula was not laughing. Azula was not smiling. Azula looked empty and cold and scared. For the first time since they'd met, Mai could really believe that Azula was younger than her. For the first time since they'd met, even if she was nineteen now, she looked like a child.

"I'm sorry," Mai said automatically. Her smile was gone. She didn't know what to do now. "Azula, he deserved it."

Azula looked like she was trying to smile. After a few seconds of silently moving her lips, she simply shrugged. Her eyes were overly bright. Mai had never seen Azula cry before.

"Turn off the light."

Mai obeyed. "It's going to be fine. Believe me, Azula. When they know what he did, no judge will—"

" _No,_ " Azula hissed. Her eyes were spots of brightness in the dark of the kitchen. She sounded more like her usual self, the self Mai had known. "This _can't_ go to court."

"It'll be okay. They'll rule in your favor. They'll—"

"I told you _no!_ " Azula's voice was shaking. She had wrapped her arms around herself. Mai moved closer to her. When she tried to rest a hand on Azula's shoulder, the other girl jerked away. "I can't tell anyone else. I won't tell them. I won't go to court and have them look at me like I'm a—" She mouthed silently, apparently lacking words. "Like I'm some goddamn _victim._ " She spat it as if it was a curse.

Mai's stomach was rapidly sinking. Of course. She was remembering the day she herself had discovered the true nature of Ozai's and Azula's relationship. Azula had been the same then, adamant in keeping her secret, refusing anyone's help but her own.

And Mai did not know what to do.

"They'll be staring at me, undressing me with their eyes, imagining Father fucking me and feeling good about themselves for feeling sorry—" Azula cut herself off to sniffle. She looked nothing short of furious and disgusted, but Mai still saw the tears glinting in her eyes before Azula raised an impatient hand to wipe them away. "And why do you think they would believe me? Do you think people want to believe this? Do you think there's proof, Mai? Like he didn't burn every last note? You think they wouldn't look at me and think _look at that cold spiteful monster look at how she walks and smiles isn't it obvious she brought it on herself?_ " The words fell from her lips like stones, laden with every last bit of scorn she could muster.

Azula was smiling. There were more tears now than she could wipe away. And just like last time, all Mai could do was stare, powerless and confused in the face of this blank, dominating horror.

 _Is that what you think?_ Mai wanted to ask it. The question was ready on her lips and tongue. But when she looked at Azula, the horrible hopeless smile on her face, she thought she already knew the answer.

"Just go, Mai," Azula said, before Mai had gathered herself. "You don't need to get mixed up in this. Just pretend you never saw anything and go."

Her eyes were blank again. Mai wished she would stop smiling. She had never seen Azula cry before. She had never expected to have to deal with anything like this. She had no idea what to say or do. The only thing she did know was that she wasn't going anywhere.

"I'm here," she said. The years of calmness and steadiness, never raising her tone or her brow, were finally coming in handy. She would be a rock in Azula's storm. "I'm not leaving."

Azula shook her head and looked away. If there was gratitude, Mai did not see it, but she hadn't particularly expected it anyway.

"Okay. No police. No courts. Um..." Mai's mind was racing ahead of her. She could feel her pulse. Was she really about to help Azula cover up her father's murder?

"I'm fucked," Azula said matter-of-factly.

"No. No," Mai said. The smell of the room was starting to overpower her again. She reached out a careful hand again to touch Azula's arm. This time, she didn't flinch away. "Let's go upstairs, okay? We're going to figure something out. I promise, we'll figure something out."

"Stop talking to me like I'm a toddler," Azula snapped, and that was close enough to her usual self that Mai almost smiled.

Still, Azula let herself be led out of the kitchen, up the stairs, until at last the two of them were in Azula's bedroom. Mai remembered this place. It seemed this house was doomed to be the epicenter of the most horrific scenes of her life.

But even with a corpse downstairs and the idea of what they were about to try to do fresh in her mind, Mai looked at Azula and thought maybe it wasn't such a terrible thing to be here after all.

Azula had slumped against the wall. It was alarming to see her so listless, but Mai refused to let herself be shaken. She had to be strong. She had to be. She dropped her bag and looked about the room.

A gleam of light from the desk caught her eye. When Mai leaned in, she saw the little blue lighter she'd given Azula on Christmas, years ago, lying there. Azula had kept it, used it recently. There was a sudden tightness in Mai's throat. She picked it up and then opened the desk drawers, gratified to find a pack of cigarettes hiding away inside.

"Here."

Azula looked up. She seemed surprised, but accepted both lighter and cigarettes without objection. Her shaking fingers managed to open the pack, and when she lit one and took a long, slow breath, Mai was relieved to see her face soften.

"Okay. Where are the others—your driver, the cook?"

Azula took another drag before answering. "I texted them from Father's phone and told them to take the weekend off. They won't be suspicious. He's done it before, when he wanted uninterrupted time with me." She smiled again, that awful smile, and Mai felt a renewed surge of vindictive hatred for the man lying dead in the kitchen.

"How long do we have before someone notices something's weird?"

"We can manufacture a vacation, I suppose," Azula said. Smoking seemed to be helping her. Her eyes were still distant, but her voice was calmer, and the redness around her eyes was the only sign of her tears. "But even when we went away, he'd answer calls, emails...and he'd always take me. Maybe a week at most?"

"Well, you should probably call the police in a day or two and tell them you think something's wrong." Mai joined Azula in sitting against the wall. Their shoulders were brushing, but Azula didn't move away. "You know, to deflect suspicion."

"And where exactly will the...corpse be when I make this call?"

Mai hesitated. "I don't suppose you have any lye, do you?"

Azula paused. She turned her head slightly toward Mai, and for the first time that evening something like one of her old smiles came across her face. Her eyes were still overly bright, but they were focused. Mai felt her heart speed. She was very aware of Azula's heat.

"God, you're sick," Azula murmured. "I don't think we have any, though. Everything's closed by now, but tomorrow..."

"Let's put him in the bathtub overnight. For the smell." Mai couldn't believe that she was actually saying the things she was saying. She couldn't believe that Ozai was dead in the kitchen, that she was in Kyoto again, that Azula's face was just inches from her own and it was as if no time at all had passed.

Azula gave a slow nod and then pushed herself up. Her smile was gone. She was unsteady on her feet. Before Mai could anticipate or attempt to stop her, Azula was stubbing out the end of her cigarette on her wrist. A low oath ripped from her mouth, and then it was over, she was throwing the butt away, and Mai was left staring.

"Let's get this over with."

"You don't have to look at him again. You can stay up here."

"Can you drag him up the stairs by yourself?" Azula snapped, and Mai had to concede the point.

The stench in the kitchen seemed much stronger now after a few minutes away from it, and Mai felt her stomach churning once more. She was determined not to throw up again, but resolve meant little when she was confronted with the ashen color of the dead man's face and the stiffness of his limbs. Again she wondered whether any of this was real. Perhaps it was a mannequin, a practical joke, nothing real and nothing lasting.

She'd wanted him dead, hadn't she? She'd dreamed and fantasized and longed to do the deed herself. And here he was, a pathetic huddle of limbs and skin and clothes on his own floor.

Azula seemed relatively unbothered. She strode to the body and wrenched the knife free. Seeing the blade in her hand forced Mai to envision it as best she could. Had Azula been angry? Had her face been as cold and still as it was now when she plunged it time and again into her father's torso?

The knife clattering into the sink disturbed her from her thoughts. Azula was staring at her expectantly.

"What do we do with the clothes? Burn them?"

"I guess," Mai said, and then, when Azula bent down to fuss with the buttons of Ozai's shirt, "Oh, God, can we not?"

Azula straightened. "I don't think lye will dissolve clothes, you know. But, fine, Mai's feeling squeamish, so we can just fish them out when he's—gone." Her voice broke a little. Mai watched Azula's mouth twitch, her eyes darting about the room and resolutely avoiding her father on the floor.

"Let's just get him upstairs," Mai said quickly. She didn't want to force Azula to spend more time thinking about what she had done. She was already imagining Azula standing alone in a darkening kitchen in the hours between the call and Mai's arrival. Had she been there the whole time, staring at her father, grappling with her sins?

"Fine," Azula agreed, her face blank and cold.

They wrapped him in plastic trash bags to contain the mess, and with Azula at his feet and Mai at his head, began the difficult work of getting him up the stairs. Even with both of them, the body was nearly too heavy, and the plastic kept slipping under Mai's fingers. After they'd somehow managed to hoist him up to the second floor, they rested. Azula stood where she'd stopped, neither moving nor showing any interest in anything other than the horrible package they'd dragged up the stairs. She was looking dangerously hollow again, but Mai could see nothing for it but finish the gruesome job and worry about picking up the pieces later.

In contrast, Mai found it hard to keep still. She wandered around the landing, looking in each doorway. The rooms seemed so vast and so hollow. This house had been much too big for two occupants, let alone for one. The silence was overpowering. It was easy to forget there was a world outside.

There was Ozai's office. Its owner would never sit in that chair again, never answer the emails arriving on his computer,

never rape his daughter again.

Mai closed the door with a sharp snap. Anger and fierce delight and again the wish that _she_ could have killed him were rising in her once more. The emotions were almost overpowering. She'd forgotten what it was like to feel this way.

That was what her brief relationship with Azula had been: highs and lows, pain and pleasure, more one than the other.

"Are you ready?"

Azula's low voice disturbed her. Mai set her expression back in its careful neutral lines, turned, and nodded.

The second flight of stairs was harder than the first, and Mai very nearly dropped her load more than once, but soon enough they had hauled him into the bathroom. When Azula turned on the lights, the bright whites and turquoises of the room were unpleasantly harsh after so much darkness. Mai rubbed her eyes while Azula turned on the water to fill the bath.

It seemed to take forever to fill. Neither of them spoke. Azula was staring into space, and Mai was leaning on the marble counter and thinking about what they had done, what they were doing. She wondered what her mother would say if she knew Mai had come back to Kyoto to help her ex cover up a murder.

They were going to get caught, weren't they? They couldn't _not_ get caught. Mai didn't have anywhere near the legal knowledge to imagine what kind of trouble they would be in. Would she go to prison?

Somehow, even with being found out seemingly inevitable, Mai was glad she'd answered her phone.

When the bath was full, they dragged the body a final time and dumped it in. Mai hesitated, then reached in and pulled the bags off of him. Ozai looked even more eerie in the water. His skin was greenish. His hair floated.

"...That's done," Mai said, pulling the cover on and slamming it shut. Then she turned to Azula.

In the light, it was much easier to identify the dark red-brown splotches across her shirt. Undoubtedly it had bled through to her skin. Mai could see dried blood crusted on Azula's neck as well. And now that she was really looking, she could see the shadow of a bruise rising dark and ugly on her cheekbone.

_Bastard._

"Azula," Mai said. The other girl turned her head and stared expectantly. She looked very tired. She looked very unwell. "Do you want to wash yourself off?"

Azula shrugged. They both looked at the covered bath.

"In the shower, I suppose," Mai said awkwardly.

Azula blinked, and just when Mai was starting to worry, she nodded.

"I'm going to go downstairs and try to clean up some. I'll be back."

Azula nodded again. Mai waited a few beats and then started for the door, when at last Azula spoke.

"The closet off the kitchen has a mop, I think."

"Thanks." Mai hesitated a moment longer. The two girls stared at each other. Then, with nothing else but to go, Mai left Azula and closed the door.

She waited on the landing with her hand still brushing the doorframe. She was afraid that Azula would simply continue standing there, staring at nothing, thinking of her father dead in the bath. And the thoughts made Mai worry that it was a mistake to leave Azula alone. She stood there, silently deliberating, each second stretching into an infinity.

Then, much to her relief, Mai heard the shower, and she felt comfortable in heading downstairs.

A clock in the living room ticked each second by louder and louder. This wasn't a busy neighborhood, and anyway it was too late now for many people to be out, so there wasn't even the comforting sound of cars rushing past outside. There was just the clock and Mai's footsteps.

The house was terrifying in the dark. Without Azula there, Mai tiptoed down the stairs and the hallway and tried not to let herself be heard. She didn't know exactly what she was afraid of. It was like being a child again, certain the darkness contained something horrific, not knowing exactly what that nameless terror was.

It was silly. She gave her head a firm shake. The only monster in the house was the dead man upstairs. The only horrors here were the things Ozai had done to his daughter.

Maybe that was what lent the air its miasma, the crimes building up and up until they became palpable. Mai remembered Azula telling her the house had been in the family for generations, and if what little she had seen of its perversion was representative of the ages past, there was more than enough sin here to stain it for ages to come.

But it was just a house, just wood and stone, and the ghosts within it were only her imagination. The important thing was the future, not the past.

The kitchen was as they'd left it, dried blood and fresh vomit marring the tile. Mai turned on the light and went in search of the closet Azula had mentioned.

According to the clock above the stove, it was almost midnight, but Mai doubted she could sleep if she tried. As she ran the mop over the floor again and again, wringing it out and watching the water turn redder and redder, she found herself wondering what exactly had happened. The brutality of it, Azula's shock, seemed to suggest a lack of premeditation.

After everything else, after so many years of living under her father's thumb, what could Ozai have done to make Azula kill him?

At last the tile was white and spotless, and the bucket of water was clouded and murky. The stench of something rotten still hung in the air, but Mai didn't know what else she could do about that, save purchasing air freshener.

When she poured the water into the sink, she saw the knife again. She supposed she'd have to wash it too. Or maybe it was better to get rid of it? Couldn't they identify the weapon based on the stab wounds?

But there wouldn't _be_ stab wounds, not when Ozai was gone—

What if she couldn't get all the blood off? What if a single spot persisted, enough to turn a missing person case into a murder investigation?

There were an infinite number of possibilities. All she could do was focus on the task at hand. Mai found dish soap under the sink, heated the water to searing, and watched blood come off the knife. It was all dry and flaky under her fingers, and though it took some scrubbing she was relieved when the knife shone silver again.

It reminded her of cleaning her little razorblades. Blood and steel and soap. But her cutting was cutting to live, and this had been cutting to kill.

She hadn't left the habit in Kyoto, wish though she might. In her tiny Ogikubo apartment, a blade sat on her nightstand, the need for hiding it gone along with the life she had left behind.

In the two years since she ran, Mai had found herself grappling with problems that she had never even dreamed of before. She hadn't expected or wanted her parents to support her, and they didn't. An eighteen-year-old who had dropped out of high school only a few months before graduation found her job opportunities horribly limited. More than once she'd been forced to spend nights in manga cafes. Before, her future had seemed set in stone, predictable, easy. Then it had become as terrifying and uncertain as her own search to find somewhere to call home.

But never, not once, had she regretted turning her back on her parents and her old life. She had wrested control with her own hands, and she had reminded herself of that at every shitty waitressing job she'd attempted before she settled in bartending.

She _had_ regretted other things. She regretted the jagged hole that her relationship with Zuko had once occupied. She regretted having to leave her little brother behind.

More than anything else, she had regretted leaving Azula in the clutches of the dead man upstairs. Her remorse, her disgust and hatred, the nagging thought that surely there was _something_ more she could have done, had been an almost constant companion for the past two years.

No matter how their truncated relationship had ended, Mai had been plagued by the thought that she had exited Azula's life just as Ursa had years ago.

The knife was clean. The water was red. She pulled the drain open and watched it swirl away, then replaced the blade in the knife block where she thought it must have come from.

It was long past midnight now; she'd spent almost an hour downstairs. With a last look around to reassure herself that there were no more visible bloodstains, Mai put the mop back in its closet, turned the kitchen light off, and made her way back upstairs.

The bathroom light was still on; the shower was still running. Unease verging on panic gripped her. Had it been a mistake to leave Azula after all? Would she open the door and find two corpses in the bath rather than the one?

She knocked, got no response, and opened the door.

The sight was almost as disturbing as it was relieving. Azula was sitting, fully clothed and absolutely sopping, against the wall, water pouring onto her. She didn't look around when Mai entered, or even when she walked carefully across the room.

"Azula?"

Mai stretched out a careful hand to place on her shoulder, but yanked it back a second later. The water she'd expected to be scalding was, instead, icy cold.

"I thought you liked hot water!"

Azula looked at her then. Her hair hung around and in her face, half-covering her eyes. Her shirt was now entirely transparent, Azula's skin and black bra standing in contrast to the insistent stain of brown-red on the fabric.

"I do."

"Well, what are you doing? Why are you wearing all of your clothes?" Now expecting the frigid blast, Mai carefully reached through the water to turn the knob to hot. Azula made no objection. Her face was absolutely empty. She didn't move even when Mai brushed her hair from her face or made an attempt to scrub the dried blood from her neck.

"I've figured it out," she said.

"Figured what out?" Mai was now impatiently fussing with her shirt. It was difficult to peel the wet fabric from Azula's skin, though she was limp and offered no resistance as Mai tugged at her sleeves and collar. Finally the damned thing was off, leaving Mai free to wash the brown splotches on Azula's torso. She left Azula's bra on, telling herself it was for Azula's comfort but knowing it was for her own.

None of this was arousing. She _couldn't_ be thinking about Azula like that at a time like this.

"I'll just let them find me. I'll tell them I killed him in cold blood, and then they'll lock me up. Maybe they'll even hang me. God, Mai, _I hope they hang me._ "

She was smiling. Her voice was warmer, happier, than Mai had almost ever heard it before. But she could see Azula's hands shaking, and whatever her own revulsion and terror and uncertainty, she had resolved to be a rock for Azula. It didn't matter that those words made her want to throw up again, to hold onto Azula and never let go, to take her hand and jump from the roof together—

"That's not happening," Mai said, forcing her tone to remain businesslike. She used her nails to pick away a particularly resilient patch of blood. "For one thing, I don't think you'd get the death penalty for this. That's like...serial killers. For another, we've already committed to this, and I wouldn't testify against you. But aside from that, Azula, I'm _not_ letting that happen to you."

"What can you do? You ran away." Her voice was silken now. She smiled up at Mai, a very cold smile. "You only ever made it worse. Do you remember my rib? It was your fault he broke it, you know. All that time away from home, all those meetings with _friends,_ and for a man who was jealous enough when there _wasn't_ evidence I was _cheating_ on him..." Her smile was only widening, growing loose and disturbed around the edges, fracturing as surely as she was. "I'm sure you can't imagine. My dear brother was so sweet and gentle with you, after all, wasn't he? But Father liked to mark his territory."

Mai could imagine. She very much wished she couldn't, but she could imagine. But every word from Azula's lips, as horrifying and painful as they all were, only made her more determined.

"Yeah, I ran," she said, voice as cold as Azula's. "But I'm here now. You called. I'm not leaving."

Azula gave a semblance of a smile, then reached around and unfastened her bra. She pulled off her skirt, panties, and tights, dropping the whole wet mass onto her shirt. Then she stood, brushing Mai's hands away, fetched the soap from its shelf, and began washing herself.

Mai averted her eyes. She was relieved that she'd gotten Azula to express _something_ , relieved that now she seemed to be interested in taking care of herself.

She gathered up the sopping pile of clothes and brought them to the sink to wring them out. The shirt was definitely a lost cause, and Mai could see stains across the skirt too. The undergarments were too dark to see blood on them, but maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of all of them, just in case.

She didn't know what else to do. She leaned against the counter and tried not to glance Azula's direction. It was a relief when the sound of water finally stopped. Azula crossed the room, her wet feet loud against the tile, and fetched a towel. She stood directly opposite Mai as she lazily wiped herself off. Her hands lingered at her breasts and neck. Her mouth was unsmiling; her eyes very direct.

It was much harder to look away at this angle, but Mai forced herself to turn her head. Azula was doing it—whatever _it_ was—on purpose, and as much as Mai wanted to devour every inch of her dripping skin with her eyes, she restrained herself.

Azula smiled. She abandoned the pretense and finished the job in a quick, businesslike manner. When she was done, she hung the towel once more and walked to the door.

Mai followed. Somehow Azula's nakedness made her more uncomfortable than if she herself had been nude. But then, her erstwhile lover always had been notably immodest. It made an ugly sort of sense, Mai supposed, just like everything about her.

Out on the dark landing, Azula walked toward and opened one of the doors that Mai was unfamiliar with. Mai paused.

"Azula?"

She turned. Her eyes were wide, her lips half-parted, as if she was surprised to see Mai standing there.

"Aren't we sleeping in your room?"

Azula's eyebrows briefly furrowed. "Oh. Yes. Of course." She gave a quick little laugh, closed the door, and strode back across the way.

Her room was as they had left it before, smelling of cigarettes and Azula's preferred perfume. Mai fetched her bag, very glad she'd had the presence of mind to bring sleeping clothes and a toothbrush.

"Do you mind if I change in there?" She gestured toward the little washroom.

Azula smiled again. "Don't want to do it in front of me? Suit yourself."

Mai didn't know how to respond, so she didn't. When she was safe in the small room, she leaned against the sink and rifled through her bag.

Being around Azula made her feel like no time had passed. And even though Azula had been the one to end their affair, still she was flirting with Mai, giving her that smile, flaunting herself. She had _called._ And even though the crooked edges of the wound from last time were still throbbing with pain, even though she _knew_ that Azula was much more poison than she was medicine, though there was a corpse just a few rooms away, Mai found her heart beating much too fast. She found herself stupidly, illogically hopeful.

When she came out again, Azula was sitting on her bed. She wasn't naked any longer, but for the decency of the silk and lace she was wearing now, she might as well have been. It was too dim to make out the color of her lingerie, but enough light came in through the window that Mai could see where skin ended and cloth began.

"That can't be comfortable." Mai was very grateful for the darkness to hide her blush. "Where are your pajamas?"

"Believe it or not, I sleep like this," Azula said. She stood. Her lips were dark, and Mai realized that she must have applied lipstick again. The thought didn't do much to make Mai more comfortable. Her heart was now firmly lodged in her throat, and it showed no signs of moving as Azula closed the distance between them.

"Um," Mai said intelligently.

"Well," Azula corrected herself, smiling, "usually I sleep naked."

Mai didn't want to think about that too much, but then Azula's hands were snaking up the back of Mai's loose sleeping shirt, and she didn't have to.

"You'll be obliging enough to take them off, won't you?" Azula wasn't smiling any longer.

"Do you really want to do this?" Mai managed. She had to ask that, though her mouth was dry and her underwear inappropriately damp.

"I don't do things I don't want to do," Azula said. Her nails were digging into Mai's shoulderblades. Their faces were very close together. Mai smelled cigarettes. "And I know you've never stopped wanting me, so what's the problem?"

Mai found none, so she closed the distance and seized Azula's lip in her teeth. Then the bed was underneath them, Azula was raking scratches into her back, and Mai was wrapping Azula's wet hair around her fingers.

She had longed for this. She had woken before from dreams of screaming Azula's name. In the past two years, on those occasions when she was so inclined to pleasure herself, it had been thoughts of this girl that had occupied her and brought her, gasping, to climax.

And the guilt, always the guilt, for using Azula the same way Ozai had.

But there was no guilt now, just the bitter taste of smoke and the feeling of silk sliding against her bare skin— _when had her clothes come off?—_ and the unstoppable moans and swears that poured uncontrollably from her lascivious tongue.

"God, you're wet," Azula whispered in her ear.

There was a hand between her legs, all sharp nails and skilled fingers. Mai was certain she was going to orgasm more quickly than she ever had before, especially when Azula trapped her aching clit under a brutal thumb. The other girl was suckling at her neck with all the force of a vampire. There were fingers sliding into her cunt, another hand teasing her nipples, and Mai's legs tensed involuntarily and her hands gripped Azula's hair as a lifeline as hot waves of pleasure swept over her.

"I'd call that premature," Azula snorted, but Mai was too busy panting to answer. The hand pulled out of her with a disgusting squelch, and then Azula's nails were playing along Mai's upper lips.

Mai hesitated. She had never done this before. But she swallowed her indecision and opened her mouth, gagging on Azula's fingers, tasting herself there and not finding it disgusting. She obediently wound her tongue around each digit, sucking Azula clean, until the other was satisfied and withdrew.

"I want—I want to taste you," Mai said. Embarrassment was a long way away now when she stared up at Azula. The other girl was still much too clothed; Mai trailed her fingers down Azula's shoulders to pull the straps away and expose her breasts.

"Don't tell me you've been missing my cunt all this time?" Azula said. There was something harder in her tone, something colder in her smile. If she hadn't been so addled by lust and adrenaline, it might have been enough to make Mai realize that this was a mistake.

As it was, it wasn't.

"Please."

Azula smiled. One hand pulled her panties down her thighs slowly and teasingly. She pushed Mai back against the sheets and then turned herself around to straddle her face. Mai didn't understand immediately why the repositioning had been necessary, but the sight and smell of Azula's pussy, red and brown and wet, was enough to distract her. Tentatively at first, and then more eagerly, she extended her tongue.

It smelled like sweat and musk. The taste was thick and salty. Mai couldn't get enough. She found Azula's clit, her labia, and she sucked and bit and licked like an eager dog, rewarded when the thighs tensed about her head, when honey leaked steadily onto her tongue.

Then suddenly she felt wet hair brushing the inside of her own thighs, and Mai understood why Azula had moved. She could hardly focus on her own duty then, when Azula's mouth was on her, certainly more talented than Mai.

Her second climax came harder and longer than the first. Mai's moans were drowned into Azula's skin as she distracted herself by pushing her tongue harder into the girl atop her. There was nectar on her tongue and smeared on her nose and dripping down her chin, but Mai didn't care.

Azula's hips ground against her, rocking in search of friction, and Mai gave a last long suck to her clit before Azula collapsed off of her.

"Yeah, I missed that," Mai managed. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

Azula did not respond. She was sitting up again, pulling the sheets back and sliding underneath them. Mai turned to look at her. Azula was facing the wall. Her back was resolutely to Mai.

"Azula?"

Mai touched her shoulder. She gave no verbal response, but a moment later she shifted to press their bodies together, her back pressing against Mai's breasts, their legs entangled.

Reality was coming slowly back to Mai. The warm afterglow was fading. Azula's skin against her skin now felt less arousing and more uncomfortable.

"Are you okay?" Mai didn't know what to say. She was remembering guilt now. But she'd _asked..._

_I don't do things I don't want to do._

Had that really been an answer?

"I gave you two. Surely that's enough," came Azula's voice, slightly muffled. "I'm tired."

"What?" It came out angrier than Mai intended. She should not have done that. She should not have done any of that. Azula was fracturing and vulnerable and desperate and—

_can't she fucking take care of herself?_

It was really a very small movement, but Mai saw the way Azula curled in on herself, shoulders hunching, knees inching toward her chest.

"Fine, once more," she said, rolling over to face Mai again. She was smiling in a way Mai had never seen her smile before, and her _eyes..._ they were horribly wide. Like an animal cowering.

Contrition.

"I don't want to do it again. Azula, what's—do you know who I am?" Mai was thoroughly unnerved and more than a little sickened.

She'd been foolish to feel such glee at Ozai's demise. The man was dead in the tub, but his hold was cemented on the girl lying next to her. And of all she had seen of Azula the last time, there was only more to come. She wasn't prepared for this. How was she to hold Azula together when she could barely keep her own jagged edges stitched shut?

How many more sickening surprises?

_Selfish selfish selfish selfish—_

Maybe she shouldn't have answered the phone.

Azula's eyes narrowed with impatience or contempt; Mai couldn't tell which.

"Yes, Mai, I know who you are," she snapped.

"Fine. Let's just go to sleep." Mai didn't know what she was supposed to do. It was the middle of the night and she was helping cover up a murder and all she could think about was her distant bed in her own tiny apartment.

"That's what I was _trying_ to do." Azula rolled onto her side once more, and both of them fell silent.

Mai knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep much. She was tired, but her mind was wide awake. The room was too warm, the wetness between her thighs too uncomfortable, and all of this much too _wrong_ for comfort.

She focused inadvertently on Azula's steady breathing. With nothing else to distract her, Mai's mind lingered on all the things she didn't want to think about. She supposed it was habit for Azula to fall asleep this way, clothes stripped from her body by lustful hands, used for someone else's satisfaction. Had he talked to her? Had he ordered her to do unspeakable things?

Hadn't he felt guilty at all?

Ozai or Mai, did it really matter? She'd taken what she wanted too, ignored her better judgment in favor of her own fantasies. She should have known better. She should have...

Mai angrily rolled over to stare at the wall. Why should she feel guilty about that? She'd _asked_ Azula. She'd come to _help_ Azula. And whatever Ozai had done, Azula wasn't a child. She'd proven herself to be more than capable of looking after herself.

There was a tiny blue light blinking from where Azula's laptop sat on her desk. Mai watched it flick on and off, on and off. Ozai was dead, Azula in pieces, and the world went on.

...and off.

On...

...and...

...off...

"Mai?"

It could have been ten minutes or an hour, but the sound of her name roused Mai from her reverie.

"Yeah?"

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I don't think so. What is it?"

There was a very long pause. Mai was still watching the little blue light as if hypnotized, as if unable to look away.

"Never mind."

Neither said anything more. Mai felt cold and very, very tired. Still her eyes refused to close. She stared at the light and wondered what came next. And somehow, her wonderings became less and less coherent, her breathing deeper and deeper, and she slipped into an uneasy sleep.

She was relieved to find herself at work. The bar was packed, her manager even crankier than usual, but Mai had the distinct feeling she'd left something worse behind. She poured drink after drink, glancing at the clock every few minutes and noticing that it displayed drastically different times with each glance.

One of the waitresses came by to collect a tray of beers.

"I think the clock is broken," Mai said. The waitress laughed and didn't respond.

The door opened. With a jolt in her stomach, Mai recognized the two people who came in. Azula's dress barely covered her panties. Her red lips were smiling. Ozai was guiding her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

"I think we should call the police," Mai said, but the waitress was gone.

Mai kept pouring drinks, but her attention was all for the pair of newcomers. They were dancing. His hands were all over her. Mai wanted to look away. Mai couldn't look away. Then Azula turned her direction and their eyes met.

Azula had a black eye. There was something wrong with that. There was something very wrong with all of this. Ozai was kissing her, and Azula was laughing, and it was the only sound Mai could hear despite all the noise of the bar.

Azula looked at Mai again. Her face was red. There was blood dripping onto the floor. But her lips were reddest of all, and she was still smiling.

Mai needed to get to her, but there were customers all along the bar and suddenly no way to get out from behind it. There was blood running down Azula's arms and legs and drenching her tiny black dress, and Mai needed to get to her, but she couldn't even move.

The waitress was back.

"I really think we should call the police," Mai said. She was aware that her voice was shaking. The waitress looked over at the scene, at Azula bleeding out and Ozai's hands covered with red as he touched her.

"Why should we call the police?" she asked, and laughed, and collected the tray, and then she was gone again too.

"Somebody needs to help her," Mai screamed. The people at the bar ignored her. They were all laughing, drinking, with no idea of what was going on behind them.

Azula was still looking at Mai. She was still smiling. Then she spoke, and though there was no sound, Mai read the words on her lips.

_"I'm okay."_

"You're not okay!" Her voice sounded and felt like broken glass. Mai was crying.

Azula was lying on the floor. She wasn't moving any longer. And Ozai, hands still dripping blood, was advancing toward the bar.

Mai woke.

Her breath was still coming very fast. She didn't recognize the room around her. She wasn't wearing clothes; why wasn't she wearing clothes?

The little blue light was still blinking on and off. And as she slowly calmed, Mai remembered where she was. She wasn't at work, Ozai was dead, and when she rolled over, she saw Azula still lying next to her. She was at Azula's house in Kyoto. They were okay. They were going to be okay.

Mai's breath came slower and deeper. Her ears stopped ringing.

Then she heard the very faint sound of sniffling and sharp gasps for breath, and she saw Azula's shoulders shaking.

Mai turned the other way. She wished she hadn't heard it for Azula's sake as well as her own. A leaden weight settled in her stomach. She didn't know what she was going to do. She didn't know how any of this would end. Some tiny, traitorous voice in the back of her mind wondered if it wouldn't have been better for Ozai to be alive after all.

The horror of Mai's dream faded as she lay there. The horror of reality crept back into her.


	2. Chapter 2

When Mai next awoke, it was serenely, no harsh whiplash from a nightmare. There was light filtering into the room now. Mai looked around but couldn't see a clock. Also notably absent was Azula. Mai got out of bed and found her pajamas on the floor. It felt weird to wake up naked. It had felt weird to sleep that way too. She was more comfortable when she'd put on her shorts and oversized shirt, and then she wandered out to find Azula.

Calling the other girl's name produced no results. Mai looked in the bathroom. It was empty except for Ozai's corpse still floating in the tub, which Mai found herself gruesomely drawn to look at, though she regretted it afterward.

Azula didn't seem to be on the second floor either. Mai was reluctant to look in all the rooms. She was only a guest in this place, after all, and it seemed rude to violate the home's privacy that way. But if she couldn't find Azula, she supposed she would have to.

When Mai at last reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw that the front door was open and that Azula was kneeling on the steps, smoking.

"How long have you been out here?"

Azula didn't turn to look at Mai when she joined her outside. Mai crossed her arms. It was quite cold. The pavement was frigid under her bare feet. She switched from standing on one to the other and wondered how long it would take to get frostbite at this temperature. Azula was wearing a loosely tied nagajuban and apparently nothing else. Seeing her face made Mai want to wince. The shadows of bruises she had seen in the shower the night before were now the full-fledged thing. Azula's cheekbone was a dark, vicious purple, and there were marks on her throat that did _not_ resemble hickeys.

Before she answered, Azula blew out a long plume of white smoke. They watched it rise and dissipate together.

"A while."

"Aren't you cold?"

"Yes."

Kneeling on the stone couldn't be comfortable. Mai walked forward to stand next to her. When she glanced down, she could easily see the curves of Azula's breasts, barely hidden as they were by the silk. Anyone from the road could see her. A neighbor. Mai supposed Azula didn't care about that. With Ozai dead, there was hardly a need to play at modesty any longer, was there?

"Are you punishing yourself?"

Azula's lips quirked upward, but she gave no other answer. She took her cigarette in hand and stubbed it hard onto the pavement. It left a black stain of ash and char there.

"Why are you still here?" she said finally, and Mai thought she understood what Azula meant.

"The job's not done yet, is it?"

"But why are you trying so hard? Why bother?" Azula still wasn't looking at her. Mai didn't know how to answer that question. She wasn't sure she had an answer.

"You need help," Mai shrugged. A sneer crossed Azula's face, and Mai wondered if it hadn't been a wrong answer.

"I'm so honored to be your charity case. Do you feel good about yourself?"

"No, I feel shitty about myself," Mai said shortly. "I don't know what you want me to say. I didn't know what to say last time either."

"So it's guilt, then."

"Stop trying to simplify it!" Mai was almost angry now. Azula insulting her motives was all the more painful because Mai herself didn't know how pure they were. Maybe part of her had just answered the phone because she remembered Azula's tongue between her legs. Maybe that was why she was still here, staring down the front of Azula's robe, justifying it with the other girl's immodesty.

"Things are simple. We complicate them to make ourselves feel better." Azula was speaking flatly. Only the faintest hint of a smile lingered around her mouth.

"Yeah, you always were a real fucking philosopher, weren't you," Mai snapped. "Look, Azula, I'm here. You want simplicity? There you go."

"There I go." Azula smiled for real then. "Fine. Have it your way, Mai. Now let's go dissolve my father, shall we?"

She pushed herself up off the pavement. Her knees were red and dimpled where the stone had dug in. Mai offered a hand, but the other girl predictably ignored it in favor of steadying herself against the wall. She led the way inside. It seemed Azula had opened windows, and the smell of the previous night was much less noticeable.

There was a clock in the entryway; it was just before eight. Mai was used to working nights and sleeping later, but she doubted she'd be able to get any more rest even if she tried. She didn't think it would be possible to ever be comfortable in this house.

Azula had paused. There was a mirror hanging on one wall. She traced the bruises on her face and neck with one finger. She seemed as matter-of-fact as if she was taking stock of her outfit for the day rather than the marks her father had left on her.

"What did he do to you?" Mai finally couldn't resist asking.

Azula turned away from the mirror and gestured at her face with an expression that suggested Mai was extremely idiotic for asking.

"No, I know; I mean, what happened?"

"You really want to know how yesterday afternoon went down for me, Mai?"

Probably she didn't. She was going to acquire more nightmare fuel. But the macabre curiosity was there all the same. And even as she looked at the hideous mottling on Azula's skin, she didn't think that there was much that could surprise her anymore. Once she'd learned what Ozai was capable of, she would put nothing past him.

"I really do."

Azula smiled. She gave a small chuckle and looked away. "I've never seen him that angry before, I don't think. It was...well, I thought he was going to kill me." She bit her still-smiling lips together. She was blinking a lot, and her eyes were overly bright. "He said—he told me—"

She stopped herself and shook her head.

"There have been times before when he's been mad, and I thought maybe he might. But yesterday I realized that there was nobody else home, and he just had this look in his eyes. And the things he said made me think he was serious." She spoke now in a deliberately clipped tone. Gone was the smile. "We were in the kitchen. I saw the knife block. The rest is history."

Mai supposed the rest _was_ history, but Azula hadn't told her much more than she'd been able to piece together on her own.

"But why was he mad?"

Azula shrugged.

Mai dropped it.

"Those bruises on your neck. Did he choke you?"

Azula laughed. The sound was repulsive, especially when words followed it. "Oh, yes. He was fond of that. He did it while fucking me once or twice and told me that asphyxiation was supposed to be arousing. I suppose it was, for him."

Mai was not a particularly religious person, but she found herself hoping that there was an afterlife and that Ozai was suffering in it.

"You _told_ me he didn't hurt you."

"When did I tell you that?"

"Last time. I remember. I remember exactly what you said. 'He doesn't beat me. It rarely even hurts anymore.'" Mai swallowed and forced herself to spit out the last words. "'He just likes to pretend I'm Mother, and it's no great effort to play along.'"

Indeed, Mai had hardly been able to forget any of the details of that winter day when she'd discovered what Ozai had been doing to his daughter. Much of the time surrounding it had been lost to the blur of her depression, but her affair with Azula, and especially that fateful afternoon, remained etched in her mind.

"And that's all true, isn't it?" Azula had that stubborn look on her face, the one that made her so resemble Zuko. "He _didn't_ beat me, and it rarely _did_ hurt. Even the choking didn't really _hurt,_ I wouldn't say."

"You're splitting hairs. He hit you yesterday, didn't he?" Mai gestured at the shadow on Azula's cheek. "And he's done that before, hasn't he? And what the hell do you call that if you don't call it beating?"

"Well, I'd always deserved it." Azula seemed to be growing impatient with the discussion. She lit a cigarette and brought it to her lips.

Mai was very close to speechless. She didn't know what she was supposed to say when Azula stood there and discussed her father's hands wrapping around her throat with the kind of casualness reserved for a discussion about the weather. And she didn't know how to respond to Azula stating matter-of-factly that she'd brought it on herself.

"How are you supposed to have deserved this? Any of this?"

Azula was smiling wryly, seemingly amused by Mai's increasing distress. "I'd do something he didn't like, something that I knew he'd be angry about. Wear something that made him think I was showing off. Spend too much time out. That sort of thing. I always knew he'd do it, but I did it anyway. And what do you call that if you don't call it _deserving it_?"

"I call it fucked up." Mai was forcefully numbing herself. She couldn't feel. She couldn't think about Ozai turning his daughter into this. If she allowed herself to _feel,_ she thought all the anger and horror and helplessness would burst out of her and drown her and Azula both. "What about yesterday? Did you deserve it yesterday?"

Azula's voice dropped into an almost-whisper. "Absolutely." Her smile was gone too, leaving only the unquestionable resolution behind the word.

" _Why_?"

Azula shook her head. "I should have let him kill me, Mai. I should have let him do whatever he wanted. Maybe he wasn't even going to kill me. But that would have been better. That would have been better than this. What am I supposed to do now? I didn't have a contingency plan. I don't have anything."

"You have me." It felt stupid to say it. All Mai could do was stand and listen. She had never really been able to do anything. She watched Azula fray around the edges and was powerless to stop her. Something hopeless inside her told her that she was years too late to help. She had been too late from the moment Ozai first laid a hand on his daughter.

She expected Azula to say something sarcastic. Azula didn't.

"Do I?"

"Yes."

And Azula smiled.

* * *

"What do we do now?"

"I suppose we wait."

The two girls lay together on Azula's bed, staring at the ceiling. The only illumination was distant sunlight filtering through clouds and through the window. Mai felt as if she might fall asleep again. It was very pleasant to sprawl lazily across the bed, her legs just brushing Azula's, cigarette smoke filling up her lungs.

It might have just been that, an ordinary lazy day, if it wasn't for the dead man cooking in their homemade solution in the next room. Somehow the pair had managed to combine Azula's knowledge of the kitchen and Mai's cooking ability into a humble breakfast of rice and miso soup, make their way to the nearest store, purchase the necessary cleaning chemicals, and return home again. There hadn't been any police sirens or phone calls. Mai was still certain that there was no way they would get away with it, but so far, they seemed to be all right.

"How long?"

"I don't know. You think I make a habit out of dissolving bodies?"

Mai didn't like the questions. She didn't like the sense that Azula was relying on her. She had always been so strong, so unflappable, so...untouchable. She'd possessed nothing but confidence from the first time she'd fucked Mai to the day in this room where she'd lost control of her secret.

And now...she was just a person. She was vulnerable. There was something so ugly about that.

Mai had called it love before, and she'd thought it was. But Azula had accused her of falling for a facade and running from the horror underneath. Maybe there wasn't some truth to it. Maybe she only wanted Azula cold and perfect and in control.

It seemed pointless to think about such things now. She'd hardly known what her feelings were two years ago, and in the time between they had surely grown more tangled and confusing. When she looked at Azula, watched her blow out steady clouds of smoke, she felt some emotion, strong and warm, blossom in her chest. She would not call it love. She would call it sadness, perhaps, guilt, lust, obsession. But the words were useless after all. She had never been good at putting words to anything she felt.

Azula was pain. That seemed to be true. But still it seemed a vastly insufficient descriptor. If Mai was to resort to metaphors, maybe Azula was like the cigarette she held between her lips, a slow death essential to momentary survival.

Like oxygen.

"What are you thinking about?" Azula asked.

"Do you think the yakuza does this?" Mai had been wondering that before Azula had sidetracked her thoughts.

"It seems more the realm of serial killers. Frankly, I'm still dubious about whether it'll even work."

"That makes two of us."

Azula sighed. "But I didn't mean what we're supposed to do right now. I meant...in general."

"I don't know what we do." It was the only answer Mai had.

"You're helpful."

"Sorry."

"Are you happy, Mai?"

The question came out of nowhere. Mai cocked her head to look at Azula. She'd asked her that before. The last time, it had angered Mai. The last time, Azula had been smiling. But now she wasn't smiling, just staring steadily back as Mai looked into her eyes.

"In Tokyo, I mean. Leaving it behind."

"I think..." Mai said slowly. "I think I'm less unhappy than I was."

"So it was worth it?"

"Yes. Definitely." There was no pause this time.

Azula looked away from her to face the ceiling again.

"What are you doing there? College?"

The question was perfectly normal, but coming from Azula it was strange. As Mai remembered, Azula had never shown a great interest in the minutiae of her life. She'd been interested only in perverse details. But now she was asking it, and there was no sarcasm evident in her voice.

"No. Not yet. I'm...uh, bartending." And it felt odd to say it. "Since I dropped out when I did, I don't know about higher education. Maybe later."

"Bartending? It suits you." Azula gave a brief smile. "I suppose you charm all the customers with your vivacity."

"Shut up," Mai grumbled.

Azula lapsed into silence. There was more white smoke drifting from between her lips. How lovely she looked in profile, staring upward, her hair fanned out on the pillow. Mai's eyes lingered on the elegant curve of her neck. The pale skin was marred with those hideous bruises.

Ozai's final mark. But they'd fade.

Mai tentatively reached out a hand to where Azula's lay on the sheets. Azula didn't object when their fingers laced together.

"And you? Finished high school at the top of your class and going to some prestigious university?"

"Of course. Still have to live at home, though—God forbid I'm not accessible for Father's every whim, right?"

Mai inadvertently squeezed Azula's hand. Azula's nails dug into her skin in response, and Mai loosened her grip.

"Are you glad he's dead?" She had to ask it. She regretted it, and she knew Azula's answer would shatter this moment of relative peace, but she needed to ask it.

"What do you want me to say, Mai? 'Yes, I'm glad I fucked up all my plans because my instincts decided I wanted to live?' I stand by what I said. I should have let him do whatever he wanted, up to and including killing me. I'd rather die like that than live like..."

"Is this so horrible?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Come on, Mai; I know my brother probably rubbed off on you, but how stupid can you be?" Azula snapped. She was glaring up at the ceiling. Mai was trying to find a suitable response when Azula spoke again. She was clipped and cold and businesslike, obviously trying her best to maintain some semblance of casualness. "Father was the only person I had, wasn't he?"

The obvious truth of that statement opened a gaping hole in Mai's stomach. The only person she'd had. The person who'd found his lust mattered more than his daughter. The person who'd left purple rings around her neck in an attempt to strangle her. The person who'd perverted Azula's sense of normalcy into something beyond salvaging.

All she'd had.

"Ty Lee," she offered.

"Where is she?"

"You can't blame her for not being here."

"Can't I?"

"It's not fair. If you wanted her, you should have called her. She would have come, you know. For you, she would have come." Mai said it as if she was certain, but for all she knew, something could have changed in the two years since she'd left.

"She can't take it. You saw what she's like. She'd just end up crying and I'd have to comfort her. If you want me to tell her I murdered my father and that he was fucking me in the same breath, you can bring the tissues." Azula said it very dismissively, but her eyes had that horrible desperate look in them again.

"It's not her crying that bothers you, is it? It's her pitying you."

"Yes. I told you; I can't stand pity."

"You can't stand people caring about you."

Azula turned to face Mai. Her eyes were narrowed.

"You think pitying someone and caring about them are the same thing?"

"In this case," Mai said mildly.

Azula scoffed. "Ty Lee's a transient. She'll realize what I am sooner or later, and then she'll be gone. Just like Mother. Just like Zuko and Uncle. Just like _you._ So why speed that process along? Why show her something that'll scare her away quicker?"

"Okay, you broke up with me. _You_ left _me._ "

Azula shrugged infuriatingly. "It comes to the same thing. And if it has to happen eventually, it's better to leave than be left."

The pit in Mai's stomach was widening. After all the time she'd spent with Azula, after undressing her and eating her out and sharing baths and showers and beds with her, this was still the most naked she had ever seen her. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to know more. Again, she wondered if she only wanted the cold facade and not its horrific contents.

"Is that why you ended it?"

Azula smiled. She squeezed Mai's hand. "Everybody leaves. But Father was there. Call it whatever you want to call it, Mai, but all I had to do was strip and then he'd be quick enough to tell me he loved me. He knew me better than anyone, and he'd still look at me, touch me, take me." Her voice, already quiet, dropped to a whisper. " _Isn't that a small price to pay?_ "

Just moments ago Azula had been talking about how she detested crying, and now there were tears clouding Mai's eyes and preparing to drip down her cheeks, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.

"Azula, I don't think he knew you at all."

"I suppose you think you know me better." Her voice was dripping with scorn.

"I don't know. But what did he know about you? He didn't even know you smoked. He didn't know about Ty, did he? Or you and me? Did he know about your dreams? How you feel about your mother?" Mentioning Ursa was always a risk, but they were so far into rough waters that Mai didn't hesitate. "What the hell did he know except sticking his prick in you?"

"Oh, Mai," Azula said, and it was condescension that coated her voice now. "He _made_ me. No—I don't mean in the sense of being my sperm donor." She broke off into an unhinged laugh that was more than a little unnerving. "I smoked because of him. You and Ty Lee were my little rebellions against him. He made my dreams. He was my past and my future. He was my entire world. There's nothing here except him, and I should have died with him. Daddy's little girl. Daddy's little monster."

Shit. Mai's cheeks were wet now. Their faces were very close together, hands still interwoven. Mai could see the bright, beautiful amber of Azula's eyes, each individual eyelash. The curve of her nose and her lips. This was the girl who had started it all, the girl who had changed Mai's life.

"God, Azula, I don't know if you really believe that, but it's not true. You're more than him. You're more than he could ever be. Look at you. You're the strongest person I've ever met. That's not him. That's all you. He was just an arrogant bastard who didn't even have the restraint to keep his hands off his daughter. But you're smart and brave and so fucking strong."

"If I was strong," Azula said, "I would kill myself."

"Wrong. You've been strong enough not to."

"That's not strength. It's just cowardice." Azula turned on her back again and closed her eyes. Her grip on Mai's hand loosened, but their fingers stayed laced together. "But thank you. For coming. For trying."

"I love you." She said it without meaning to. But it came out, and she believed it, and the warmth of the word suffused her.

Azula didn't say anything. She was just smiling, her eyes closed, wetness glimmering on her eyelashes. And Mai was content without an answer. She was content to watch Azula's chest move slowly up and down.

Azula was pain, but she was this feeling too.

Eventually her fingers fell slack, and Mai realized she was asleep. For a while longer she watched her breathing, and then as the grey light filtering through the window grew slowly dimmer, she rose and left the room.

She checked her phone and was unsurprised to find she had no texts or calls to answer. She had nobody in Tokyo, after all. It was odd how freeing she found isolation when she thought of how Azula had spoken of it. But then, Mai had chosen this. Choice made a world of difference.

Mai didn't know what she was supposed to do now. She'd gotten her shift for the previous night covered, but what about that night? The next? Ozai would be syrup by evening, and she supposed she'd be free to go.

To leave Azula alone once more.

She'd clawed a new life out for herself in Tokyo, and was she really about to turn her back on it for _Azula?_ Azula, who had torn her and Zuko apart and then abandoned her without a second thought? Azula, who took pleasure in insulting and belittling her? Azula, blood on her shirt and bruises on her neck, wishing for death with a smile?

It was an addiction. Mai had smelled the smoke, and now she could hardly resist taking another drag. The question wasn't really a question at all. She was already lost.

She wanted to check on Ozai's progress, but managed to restrain herself. Instead, she made her way to the second floor. Ozai's office was the same as she'd left it last night. She seated herself in his desk chair and looked around. There were piles of paper everywhere, most seeming to relate to the company. Mai only had a vague idea, provided by a throwaway comment from Azula the last time, as to what she was looking for. But when she moved one stack of papers, a framed photograph sitting near the back of the desk caught her attention. She picked it up.

Two people smiled out at her. Ozai was instantly recognizable, though his face was less lined here, and no grey sprinkled his hair. And the woman...Ursa _did_ look like Azula. The resemblance was almost uncanny. But the woman in the picture was older, and there was no hint of the cold sarcasm that always stained Azula's smiles.

Looking at the two of them felt _weird._ They were smiling like a couple in love. They looked happy there within the confines of the picture. Yet somehow the context of it all made their smiles seem terrifying.

Did the Ursa in the picture know? Had she already begun to contemplate leaving? Or was this before the relationship fractured, before even children, perhaps? Surely the people there had no idea of what was to come. Ursa couldn't know that she'd be fleeing her husband, terrified of being found. She couldn't know that, in her absence, Ozai would disown the son and rape the daughter she'd left behind. And Ozai couldn't know that all of it would come to this, a knife in his chest and his body dissolving in his own bathtub.

Mai couldn't stop staring. When had it happened? How had it happened? How had the relationship between the two people smiling there fractured so horrendously, leaving years and lives of collateral damage in its wake?

How could anyone ever know how their happiness would end?

She turned over the frame and pulled it open. Maybe there was a date on the back of the photograph. But when the frame came off, something tumbled into her lap. The back of the picture was blank, but Mai retrieved the small key from where it had fallen and thought she'd found something more interesting anyway.

The safe wasn't difficult to find; it was tucked away inside the great wooden bookshelf that dominated the office's far wall. Mai had no scruples whatsoever about unlocking and opening it, though she did pause for a second with her hand on the handle, wondering what she was about to find.

There was nothing terrifying inside the metal box, just a thick folder and an unsealed envelope. Mai pulled out both and returned to the chair. She supposed maybe she should feel guilty about snooping through a dead man's things, but she felt quite the contrary. Ozai deserved it. He deserved no dignity or respect whatsoever. It gave Mai an obscene delight to violate his privacy.

She opened the envelope first and discovered it was filled with more photographs. The very first was Ursa again, looking away from the camera, clothed in a radiant golden uchikake with embroidered flowers spilling across it. Then Ursa and Ozai together, both in their wedding clothes, looking at each other as if there was no world beyond the two of them.

Almost all of the pictures were of Azula and Zuko's mysterious mother. Ursa, sitting by a window, her hair messy and a cup of tea in her hands. Ursa, at the beach, half-submerged in the waves. Ursa, wearing sunglasses and smiling almost guiltily. Ozai was there sometimes too, looking at his wife, holding her hand, seemingly always touching her.

...There was a series of grayscale photographs. Ursa's head thrown back, lips parted, fingers grasping at her chin and neck. Ursa staring up at the camera with a dazed look in her eyes, sweat gleaming on her forehead. Ursa wearing nothing at all, her hands twisted in the sheets and her eyes closed as if in ecstasy.

Mai did feel guilty now. She shouldn't be seeing this. But curiosity was stronger than her misgivings, so she kept looking.

She was glad she did, for soon after the black-and-white photos were two of greater interest to Mai. These were family pictures, not just Ozai and Ursa but the children as well. The first must have been right after Azula was born, for she was nothing more than an infant swaddled in white. There was two-year-old Zuko, smiling down at his newborn sister for what was probably the first and last time.

The next showed the family at a festival. Zuko was grinning and holding up a goldfish he'd won while Ursa hugged him. Ozai had his hands on his daughter's shoulders. Azula couldn't have been more than three or four. She was wearing a tiny yukata and scowling at the camera. Despite herself, Mai smiled.

But still the pictures carried with them the terrible feeling of wrongness. Mai knew how the story ended. She couldn't look at the tiny faces there without thinking of where they'd ended up.

She'd reached the end of the pile of photographs. She put them on the desk and opened the folder instead. There were no pictures here, just a lot of papers. On top was a handwritten list of cities: Chiba, Saitama, Seoul, Hong Kong, Beijing...

She flipped through. There were maps with writing on them, various documents that looked like bills, pages of notes. And there _were_ photographs, a different kind of photographs, blurry ones and distance shots with a figure circled.

Mai had her suspicions about what exactly this was, and when she pulled out a bill to study it, they were confirmed. Ozai had hired someone to track down his wife.

Maybe Ursa would be able to come out of hiding now, if she ever heard the news that her husband was missing. Mai leaned back in the chair and wondered what it would be like to reunite Ursa with her children. Zuko would be ecstatic, but Azula...

Azula only ever spoke of her mother with a sneer on her face and scorn in her voice. Seeing her again might do her more harm than good. There were years and years between them now, a chasm that could never be crossed. Whatever their relationship had been like before, Azula's hatred had had plenty of time to fester.

Then Mai wondered about Iroh and Zuko. With Ozai gone, maybe there would be room for reconciliation there. Of course, Azula would probably sooner jump from the roof than extend a friendly hand first. Even if it was possible, it would take a long, long time.

Mai's thoughts stuck on Zuko. She couldn't deny that she wanted to see him. Whether he'd want to see her was another question altogether. But maybe while she was in Kyoto she could try contacting him. She really did want to know how he was doing. She wondered whether he'd gotten rid of all the mementos of their time together. Maybe he still held a grudge. Certainly she deserved it.

There was a phone number and a name scrawled across the bottom of one of the blurry photographs. According to the date stamped in the corner of the picture, it had been taken less than a year ago, which made it the most recent of the documents. Mai stared at that name and number. It couldn't _hurt,_ surely, to try?

She regretted it as soon as her phone was in hand and ringing, but she forced herself not to hang up. The worst thing that could happen was that she got a stranger on the other end. The possibilities of Ursa returning, for Zuko's sake if not Azula's, were surely worth the thrumming of her heart and the shaking of her fingers as she waited for someone to answer.

The phone rang and rang, until just as Mai was certain she was going to get voicemail there was a click on the other end.

"Hello." It was a woman's voice, at least.

"Hello. Is this...Tazawa Akane?" Whoever had written the name had unbelievably sloppy handwriting, making it difficult to tell where one kanji ended and the next began.

"Who is this?"

Mai was rapidly realizing that she should have put more thought into this than she had.

"Um, my name is Mai."

"Is this concerning the job application? I would really prefer to communicate by email-"

"No, no. It's not about a job. I'm a friend of Zuko and Azula."

There was a very long pause on the other end of the line, so long that Mai began to wonder whether the woman had hung up. But every second of silence that passed made her more and more certain that she'd really reached Ursa.

At last there was a long shuddering breath, and then she spoke again. "I can't do this. Please, I'm begging you, stop doing this." Her voice cracked. She sounded nothing short of desperate. "I can imagine what he's paying you, but don't you have any conscience? Haven't you made enough already?"

"I—I'm not working for Ozai," Mai blurted. "I just found your number in his things. I just wanted to see if it was really yours."

"Why should I believe that? Just tell him it's really me so I can move again, so you can find me again. But don't say my children's names. Leave them out of this. You're the reason it's been a decade since I've seen them. You're the reason they can't know their mother. I should give up asking if you have a soul. Go collect your paycheck. I suppose I'll be hearing from you in another few months." Her anger came through clearly, but the hysteric edge of her voice made Mai wonder if she wasn't crying.

"Please, I'm telling the truth! I—well, I don't know if I have a soul, but I'm not the person he hired to find you. I just found the documents. I don't think anyone will be coming after you anymore. Your husband, Ozai, he's—he's dead."

Another long pause. Mai really was worried about her hanging up now, and then she'd have forcing Ursa to run again on her conscience as well.

"How am I supposed to believe you?"

And more than anger or sadness, Mai realized that the woman on the other end of the line simply sounded exhausted. Mai didn't have an answer for her. She desperately tried to think of something, anything convincing.

"I'm not a private investigator. I'm a—bartender. I dropped out of high school two years ago, the same high school that Azula went to. Look, two Christmases ago, you sent Zuko a card, and I was there with him while he opened it. He misses you more than anything. I just wanted to help him see you again. Hell, I don't even live in Kyoto anymore. I'm just at your old house—or Ozai's house, I guess—with Azula."

"If you're with Azula, then put her on."

Mai should have expected that. "I can't. She's asleep. And I don't know if you really want to talk to her."

"Of course I want to talk to my daughter." As it transpired, Ursa's voice could have as much bite as Azula's.

"She's...not the child you left behind."

Ursa laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. "Do you think I don't know that? Of course they're not the same. It's been a _decade_ since I've seen my children, and you think you have to tell me they're not the children I left behind?"

"I'm sorry, but she really is..." Mai didn't know what to say. Cold? Vicious? Broken? The only thing she was certain of was that if she did wake Azula up and put her on the phone, the girl would have nothing but scorn to spit at her absentee mother.

Ursa exhaled sharply. "Fine. Mai, you said? You said my husband is dead?"

"I understand that it's hard to believe, but yes. I wouldn't be calling otherwise. I thought it might be safe for you to come back."

"Come back? What do I have there? He—he shouldn't be dead. It should be me. Whatever I've been doing for the past decade isn't _living._ "

That resounded uncomfortably with Mai.

"Shouldn't you come back for Azula and Zuko?"

"Do I deserve to see my children? You said yourself that they'd be strangers now. I have nothing in Kyoto. I have nothing anywhere." Ursa laughed again. "Why couldn't you have just been calling about the job?"

"Even if you feel like you don't deserve it, you should. You shouldn't keep punishing yourself because you think it's right. I know Zuko would be euphoric to see you again. And Azula—I think she needs you." The lie burned as it fell from Mai's tongue, even as she told herself it was not entirely a lie. Azula needed _someone._ The apparent hatred she harbored for her mother wasn't yet relevant.

"How did my husband die?" Ursa asked abruptly.

"That's...not really my story to tell you."

"That's convincing."

"Sorry."

Ursa sighed. For a while there was no sound from her end of the line but her slow, steady breathing. Mai idly stared down at the pile of papers in her lap and wondered whether she was doing the wrong thing/

"I'll come back," the woman said at last.

Mai sat up. "Really?"

"I'm tired of running. You haven't convinced me that this isn't a scheme to lure me back to him, but I don't care anymore. I'll come. I want to see them. I want—I want to see them."

* * *

It was past ten. Mai had turned her phone off so she wouldn't have to hear it buzzing while her increasingly irate coworkers texted her to ask where she was. She knew she was burning a bridge, but she didn't care.

Her hands were getting sore from scrubbing the insides of the bathtub. The last traces of Ozai had already disappeared down the drain in a brown, syrupy ooze. Mercifully, the bathroom just smelled like chemicals, not like the stench of a dead man. The tub itself was mostly clean now, though the two of them were washing down every inch to ensure there was no residue.

Mai's attention was only half-on the task at hand. She was watching Azula. The other girl was working diligently, but her eyes had that blank, distant look to them again. She had been businesslike and cold when they'd checked on the corpse's progress, when they'd finally found nothing that resembled a human remaining. Yesterday morning, her father had awoken as usual. Yesterday afternoon, she'd killed him. And today, she'd washed him down the drain.

"I think that's probably good," Mai said, setting down her rag and running her fingers along the tub. She couldn't feel anything suspect on the smooth surface, and her fingertips came away clean.

"Let's hope so," Azula said. She gave the shell of a smile and stood. "Shall we fuck in the bath to celebrate?"

"You wouldn't catch me dead in there," Mai said. She didn't think it was a serious offer, anyway.

"No. We'd just catch Father dead in there."

They caught each other's eyes and then neither could help laughing a little.

It felt good to leave the bathroom, to turn the light off and close the door behind them. The deed was done. Ozai was history. Even if the police turned up the next day, Mai didn't regret a thing. He'd deserved such an ignoble death, such a resting place.

When they were back in Azula's room, Mai seated herself on the bed and pulled out her phone, ready to deal with the deluge of angry messages.

Movement in the corner of her eye distracted her. She looked up and saw Azula pulling her shirt over her head. When she realized she was being watched, she leaned back against the wall, arching her back as she pulled her pants off as well.

"What are you doing?" Mai asked. It was a stupid question. She knew what Azula was doing.

Azula merely met her gaze and smiled. She reached up to pull out her ponytail and let her hair tumble down around her shoulders. With two strides she'd closed the distance between herself and Mai, and then she was kneeling on Mai's lap, pinning her to the bed.

"Azula, I don't want to do this," Mai said. She was feeling kind of sick, a sickness that had nothing at all to do with the body they'd just dissolved. She was thinking of the night before. She wasn't going to let it happen again.

Azula didn't respond. She laughed a little, and then her teeth were toying with the ever-so-sensitive skin of Mai's neck and throat. Her hands were wandering. And as skilled as Azula was at this, as arousing as the sensations were, it didn't really feel good at all.

"No," she said, more insistently.

Azula pulled away. She was wearing a quizzical sort of smile with one eyebrow cocked. Her eyes still had that awful blankness.

"Mai, it's all right." Her tone was patronizing.

"It's _not_ all right."

"I just said it was. You can put your conscience to rest now."

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?" Mai narrowed her eyes. Certainly she couldn't give as piercing a stare as Azula, but she could give it a try anyway.

"You don't want to do this because you feel like you're taking advantage of me, and it makes you feel bad. I'm telling you that you're not. So will you just relax and enjoy it?" She was still smiling. Her nails were trailing up Mai's spine to the clasp of her bra. She deftly undid it.

"Why do you want to do this so badly?" Mai's voice was rising. She didn't like this. For once, she wasn't eager to cede control.

"It's not about what I want. I _told_ you to just let go of your hangups. Is it so _difficult_ for you to quit pretending?" Azula's nails were digging into the skin of Mai's back, but their sharpness was nothing compared to her voice.

"Pretending _what_?" Mai was more than a little lost, certain only that she did not want to do this and that they were about to have another one of those unendurable conversations that ended with a pit in her stomach.

"That this isn't what you came for."

Mai was speechless. Azula seemed to take her lack of words as a confession. Her smile widened. Her eyes refused to shed their horrible cold blankness.

"It's okay. I really don't mind at all. God knows you're less demanding than Father, and your moral qualms are actually kind of endearing. So just let me do it, Mai." Her voice was shaking. Mai didn't know when her voice had started shaking. Eyes and voice and hands and smile. Azula was all-consuming, and even if she knew what to say, Mai didn't think she could speak.

"And tell me you'll stay. Even if it's just for this, _tell me you'll stay_." Azula leaned in again. Her lips toyed with Mai's earlobe. Her nails had gouged out holds in Mai's shoulders, but Mai paid no attention to the pain. The only sensation she was aware of was the wetness seeping into the collar of her shirt as Azula moved down her neck.

"I didn't come for this," Mai said hoarsely. She was amazed her eyes were still dry.

Azula lifted her head. Her cheeks were shining. More than the dead Ozai dissolving in the tub, more than a knife stained red and spattered with gore, Mai found the sight disturbing.

"Just admit it," Azula said, her voice breaking into a whisper.

"I didn't come for this," Mai said again. "I won't say it. It isn't true. I don't care if you believe me or not. _I didn't come for this._ "

Tears were coming thick and fast down Azula's face. Her eyebrows were furrowed as if in anger at her own body for betraying her. Her mouth was still stretched in a horrible red smile.

" _What else is there?_ "

"I came for you."

"This is all I am, Mai. This is all I ever was."

_This isn't me, Mai. It's not even important. It's just a tiny little thing that you're blowing vastly out of proportion._

"That's not true. None of that is true." Mai didn't know how she wasn't crying. She didn't know how she was managing to keep her voice level. She had no idea what to say or do. "I didn't fall in love with fucking you."

"Then you _fell in love_ with an illusion." There was the scorn, somehow comforting in its familiarity.

"You can tell yourself whatever you want. But I'm telling you that there is more. You know there's more. You know you exist outside of him. You're alive now. And I'm telling you that you are more than this. You told me that yourself. When I left, the only thing I regretted was leaving you behind, and I'm telling you that had _nothing_ to do with sex."

"And had _everything_ to do with pity."

"Dammit, Azula, call it whatever the hell you want. But at least listen to me. If you honestly believe this is all you are, then find something else. Do something else. Make yourself again. But I don't think you think that."

Azula said nothing. She leaned over and let her forehead rest on Mai's shoulder. Mai's first instinct was to wrap her arms around the other girl, but she hesitated. Any touch that she considered comforting might be, to Azula, something entirely different. So she stayed still, Azula awkwardly perched on her lap, her bony pelvis actually quite uncomfortable now that Mai was paying attention.

"Will you try?" Mai asked. She needed an answer. They couldn't keep going like this.

"Will you stay?" Azula asked. Her voice was muffled by Mai's skin and shirt.

Mai's stomach twisted. Was she going to promise something she couldn't guarantee? Could she really stay with Azula? She found it difficult to envision a happy ending. Probably it would end in blood for both of them.

But what else did Mai have? Could she return to Tokyo now and know what she had left behind? Would she read Azula's name on the news? How would she live with herself? Maybe she had found peace in leaving, but she couldn't go back to it.

Azula had pushed her to leave; Azula was dragging her back.

"I'll stay," Mai said very quietly.

"Then I'll try," Azula said. She lifted her head and their eyes met. She wasn't crying so hard anymore. Somehow she was radiant even with mascara smudging her cheeks and snot gleaming underneath her nose. Mai very much wanted to kiss her.

Instead, she carefully pushed Azula off her so she could stand. An open pack of cigarettes and the little blue lighter were laying on the desk where Azula had last thrown them. Mai retrieved them and held them out.

"Are you trying to kill me?" Azula asked. A weak smile quirked her lips. The tiny flame flared into existence, turning her face red and orange.

"I'm trying to save you," Mai said.

* * *

Mai had trouble falling asleep again that night. She had so much to think about that it was a wonder she was tired at all. She rolled back and forth, trying to find a comfortable position, trying not to think of the warmth of Azula's bare skin just a few inches away.

She was wondering if Azula was right. She was wondering if it was just pity keeping her there. If she'd had more of a spine, maybe she wouldn't feel responsible for this mess.

But it was done. Mai thought of Ozai and Ursa smiling out of the photographs. It was impossible to tell which choices would lead to regret, wasn't it? All she could do was put one foot in front of the other. A life of second-guessing those few choices she did make was just as bad as a life where she hung in stasis.

"Mai?"

Azula disturbed the silence.

"Yeah?" Mai wondered if she was going to say "never mind" again.

Azula said something very quickly that Mai didn't understand.

"What?"

"I'm pregnant," Azula said, her voice gasping and broken.

" _What_?" Mai did not mean to laugh, but an incredulous snicker found its way out of her mouth nonetheless. Azula had to be lying. This was too much. This was...

Azula rolled over to face her. She was smiling even as silent tears made their way down her cheeks, staining the pillow underneath her.

"Does that change your mind about staying?"

"Are you _serious_?" That, too, was a stupid response. Mai already knew the answer, even if she was wishing with all of her might that it wasn't true.

"No, Mai, it's all a _big fucking joke._ "

Suddenly it made sense. "That's why—yesterday, that's why he was angry with you."

Azula nodded slowly. "I didn't know what to do. I was doing everything right. I hadn't missed a day. I didn't know why it happened, and I didn't know what to do. I was panicking, and I called him, and he came home—" Her voice broke, and she was forced to pause to gasp for breath.

Mai was frozen. What was she supposed to do? How the fuck was she supposed to deal with this? She hadn't been prepared for the first crisis. Now the second, somehow even more gruesome, threatened to defeat her.

"He sent his driver out again. He didn't want anyone there—I knew I shouldn't have told him as soon as I saw him, but—he called me an irresponsible whore. I think he thought I did it on purpose, like I'd actually _want_ my father to knock me up. He was so angry. I just stood there, but he was getting madder and madder. I tried to tell him it was just an accident, and then he told me that he saw now that _I_ was an accident, and—'the brat can't be more of a disappointment than you.'"

Azula's mouth twisted into a horrific smile. Mai didn't know what her own face was doing. All she could do was stare and listen, wish she couldn't imagine the scene unfolding as Azula described it.

"Then he pinned me against the counter and..." Azula wordlessly trailed her fingers about her neck, and Mai understood. "Then I started crying, like a stupid child, and I suppose that made him wonder if he really wanted to strangle me. He relaxed his grip, the knife block was right behind me, and—"

"Fuck." Mai had nothing to say. She was out of things to say.

"How could I let this happen? Why was I stupid enough to _tell_ him? Why didn't I just make do with a fucking coat hanger?"

"Azula, please," Mai said quietly.

"I told you I should have let him kill me. I wouldn't have to deal with this if I'd just let him kill me."

"This isn't _that_ bad. I mean, we dealt with him, didn't we? We can deal with this. And stop saying that. You _didn't_ let him kill you, so it's over. I thought you were too smart for regret."

"You're so comforting," Azula said, but she managed a cold, albeit watery, smile.

"Do you know how far along you are?"

"No."

"Okay. Do you...want to keep it?" Mai was quite certain of the answer, but she felt she had to ask anyway. The venom of the scathing look Azula shot her, though, was enough to make her regret asking.

"Oh, yes. I've always dreamed about motherhood. And what better opportunity than the seed my own father planted in me? What a little monster that thing would be. Cursed before it's even born. It would probably have three arms, and it still wouldn't manage to be as _stupid_ as me—"

"You're not stupid," Mai said tiredly. "Okay. I get it. You don't want to keep it."

"I suppose you have a home abortion kit up your sleeve, too?"

"No. No. We are _not_ doing that. We're going to a doctor, a _real_ doctor. It's way too dangerous. –Yes, I know you don't care if you die, but maybe I do."

"You're so sweet," Azula cooed. Then her voice became steely. She had that stubborn look on her face, the one that was so reminiscent of her brother. "I don't want to go to a doctor. They'll ask too many questions."

"Just tell them you were raped. You don't have to say by whom."

Azula's nostrils flared. Mai remembered how adamant she had been about refusing to let Ozai's murder go to trial. This probably felt the same. But telling one doctor, a clinic, wasn't the same as telling courts and judges and police.

"I'll think about it," she said. Then she rolled over and said nothing else.

"Good night," Mai said, unable to entirely keep the edge out of her voice.

There was no response.

* * *

Mai's heart was pounding in her throat. Her hand was sweaty as it clung to the metal pole for balance while the train rushed along. She was able to appreciate the humor in her being so nervous about this considering what she'd dealt with the past two days, but appreciation didn't diminish her nerves.

She'd woken up alone again that morning, dressed, and eventually found Azula in the dining room. She was a little surprised by Azula's state. She was fully clothed, the bruises of her neck and face hidden under makeup, sitting regally as she sipped from a cup of tea. This seemed more like the old Azula and less like the shattered girl of the previous days.

"How are you?" Mai had asked.

"Remorseful," Azula had said. Her face was a steel mask and her words were clipped. She took a long drink from her cup and set it in her saucer. Mai's eyes lingered on the red stain where the china had met Azula's lips.

"About what?"

"Telling you."

"Oh." Mai hadn't known how to respond. When she'd had the volatile Azula, she'd wished for the controlled Azula. Now that she the controlled Azula, she was wondering if she didn't know how to deal with her either. "Right. You don't like...exposing yourself. But you did, and I—"

"Stop talking," Azula had said calmly, and Mai obeyed. Azula folded her hands carefully on the table in front of her and then held Mai in her piercing gaze. "I need some time alone. I'd like you to leave."

"Uh, _leave-_ leave?"

"No. Just...go get breakfast or something." Azula had rifled in her pocket, extracted a bill, and slid it across the table. Mai looked down and saw four zeroes. "Stay out for a few hours. I don't want you here."

This had been more than a little demeaning, but Mai's primary concern hadn't been being treated as disposable.

"What are you going to do while I'm gone?"

"Is that your business?"

"Are you going to hurt yourself?"

"If I do, that's my prerogative, isn't it?" Azula had smiled. "I can make my own decisions. My life is my own, not yours. Not Father's. Now go, please. I can't stand looking at your face any longer."

"Bitch," Mai'd muttered, and she'd really been more than happy to collect the money and head out the door. She passingly thought that maybe it would be a relief to come back to a dead Azula, though guilt followed that thought soon enough.

The night before, Azula had begged her to stay. Now she'd kicked her out. Mai thought she understood why, but still it was exhausting. Azula did not make anything easy. Was this how it was going to be, Mai had wondered; highs to lows, insults all the time, what little pathetic support she could offer unacknowledged?

And now she was standing on a train, her nerves mounting as she neared her destination. It occurred to her that she really could leave for good, head back to Tokyo and apologize to her coworkers and forget this strange interlude.

But she knew she wouldn't. She was trapped in Azula's gravitational pull. For better or worse, whatever her doubts and grievances, she was here.

The train reached the stop she'd been waiting for. Mai took a deep breath and stepped out onto the platform. She hoped his apartment was in the same place, though it would probably end up being less awkward if she rang a stranger's bell.

Down the busy streets, weaving her way between people, Mai made her way to the familiar block of apartments. She climbed to the third floor, found the unit she was looking for, and hovered outside of it. After what couldn't have been more than a minute but what felt like much more, she convinced herself to press the buzzer.

God, she hoped Zuko wasn't there.

Soon enough she heard the sound of footsteps, and then the lock was turning and the door was opening. And then there was Iroh, looking every bit as round and jovial as he had the last time Mai had seen him. He looked at her for a few seconds, clearly taken aback, and then he smiled.

"Mai!"

Then he was ushering her into the apartment, and the next thing she knew she was kneeling at the table, the heated blanket warming her legs as Iroh bustled around to make tea.

"It's wonderful to see you! What are you doing back in Kyoto?"

"You knew I left?"

"Zuko said something about it."

Mai watched his face carefully, but Iroh seemed nothing short of delighted to see her. Surely he knew why she and Zuko had broken up. If Zuko had told anyone, it would have been Iroh. But he seemed to carry no enmity at all toward her for it.

Maybe he was just hiding it well.

Iroh set a cup of tea in front of her and then seated himself as well. He was smiling at her. All of Mai's nerves seemed to have vanished. She had many good memories associated with this apartment. Winter hadn't relinquished its grip on the city outside, but inside it was warm and even humid, thanks to Iroh's collection of plants. She had spent hours here with Zuko, studying, talking, laughing.

Now the memories had soured. Mai found herself wondering whether Azula had been worth it.

"I didn't know Zuko even knew I left," she said carefully. The tea was every bit as delicious as she remembered when she took a sip.

"Oh, yes. Your parents called him, I believe, to ask if he knew where you'd gone."

"Oh..." Mai felt guilty. Zuko shouldn't have had to deal with that.

"Have you seen your family since you've been back?"

"No. I've just been here a couple of days, and besides I don't think they'd want to see me. I've spoken to my mother, what, four times in the past couple of years, and she sounds as angry every time. I think they're eager to pretend they don't have a daughter." It was harder to say than Mai expected. She'd thought this to herself many times since leaving, but never before had she said it aloud.

Iroh nodded, his smile fading as he looked at her. His eyes looked much like his brother's, but they were much warmer.

Mai knew she couldn't tell him about Ozai, but still it felt wrong to hide that truth from him. Iroh had been so good to her before, and now he was serving her tea and talking to her rather than slamming the door in her face, and still she was lying to him.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "But I'm glad I left. Even if my parents disown me."

"You were brave to leave it all behind," Iroh said. "And what you did to Zuko-"

Mai braced herself.

"—was admirable."

"What?"

"You didn't want him to miss you. You wanted him to feel free to move on. I think Zuko suspected that himself too, though he was very angry for a while."

"Hold on." The peace was gone. The guilt returned. So that was why he'd welcomed her so warmly. "It wasn't a lie."

Iroh frowned.

"When I told Zuko I'd been...seeing someone else, that wasn't a lie." Mai waited for Iroh to tell her to get out. She waited for the warmth in his eyes to dissipate. But all he did was let out a sigh.

"I see. You left so soon after that I thought..."

"The other thing ended too. It ended the day I broke up with Zuko." Mai smiled down at the table. It had been almost exactly two years ago. The time after that day broke into a haze, but she remembered that morning clearly enough. The sky had been a bright, cloudless blue. It had been cold. Azula had smiled so beautifully when she told Mai it was over.

She looked up. Iroh was observing her, looking sad. Looking disappointed. And his disappointment was somehow harder to bear than her parents' had ever been.

"Are you going to yell at me?" she asked.

Iroh chuckled. "I don't think that would do much good. I won't condone it, but I think you probably have already beaten yourself up enough about it. People make mistakes. That doesn't mean I'll throw you out on the street."

"I knew it was wrong. I knew it was wrong the whole time." It was so easy to talk to Iroh. It was so easy to tell him things she'd never told anyone else. "And it wasn't ever even about Zuko. It was my parents and the weight and _her—_ I don't know if it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me, or the best."

Iroh was still looking at her. His eyes were so calming. And despite the terror that was desperately trying to still her tongue, Mai knew that she could tell him and she wanted to tell him.

"It was Azula," she said.

Iroh blinked. "What was Azula?"

"The reason I broke up with Zuko. The person I was having an affair with. It was her." Even when she was talking to Iroh, it was very hard to say it. Mai hadn't ever really imagined herself telling anyone. It said so much about her, so much she wasn't eager to share.

Iroh did look surprised now, but the disappointment was somehow more pronounced. Mai wasn't even sure that it was disappointment. Maybe it was some other negative emotion she'd never seen on his face before. Would this be it, the truth that would make him throw her out?

"She did it on purpose, didn't she?" he said quietly.

Mai felt she should tell him the truth, though she didn't like the way he'd phrased it, though her tongue was thick and heavy in the back of her throat and swallowing was difficult.

"Yes, I think so. That's what she told me."

"And when you ended things with Zuko, she ended things with you?" Iroh shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mai. Perhaps I should have warned you, but—"

"Warned me?" Something ugly was growing in Mai's stomach. She didn't like it. She was looking at Iroh and seeing something she had never seen before. "It was my choice. It was my mistake to cheat on Zuko. She didn't _make_ me do anything."

"It is admirable of you to defend her when she used you like that, used you to wage a war on her brother."

"Why are you talking about her like that?" This was anger. She was talking to Iroh, for whom she had always had the utmost respect, and she was angry. She was thinking of Azula with her hands covered in blood and her voice quavering as she begged Mai to stay. "You can forgive me for cheating on Zuko, but you can't forgive her?"

"My forgiveness means nothing to her. My niece is interested only in hurting people, as she hurt Zuko, and as she hurt you." Iroh's voice was still calm, his face still quite placid, but that only made Mai angrier. "She is her father's daughter."

"What do you know about her?" Mai was very aware that she shouldn't be speaking so rudely to Iroh, that she would certainly regret this, but in the moment she did not care. "What do you know about her hurting me? You've always been there for Zuko. Why is she different?"

Iroh looked taken aback, and then he frowned. His whole face seemed to darken. "Every time I have reached out to her, she has rejected me. She lives only in the shadow of my brother. You are not the only one angry at me, Mai. Frequently I think that there is much more I could have done, if I had tried sooner. If I had known..."

"Azula is not a lost cause," Mai said through gritted teeth.

"Why do you have such faith in her?" Iroh asked. "Forgive me, Mai, but you never seemed one to believe in the innate goodness of mankind." He gave a small smile, and Mai felt a little bit better.

"I'm not. And I'd be lying if I said I hadn't felt disposable to her, or wondered if it really meant anything. I'm not going to say she's a nice person. But when you say she hurt me..." Mai paused. She was reliving things, remembering things, and even the dull edge of the memory of emotion was enough to make her feel an old ache. "It wasn't as clean as that. I don't think it was as clean as she intended."

"If you don't mind my asking..."

"It's hard to put it into words. There were just...flashes, I guess, of humanity. That's not the right word. But times when it felt real. When she felt real." Mai snorted. "I suppose those could be orchestrated too. She tried to tell me they were, but I didn't believe her. And free of that asshole's influence—"

She cut herself off. She was coming dangerously close to telling Iroh about Ozai. And while part of her still very much wanted to, that would lead to inevitable questions that were Azula's to answer, not Mai's.

"That's the trouble, isn't it? Free of my brother's influence," Iroh said. He looked sad again. "Azula will not allow herself to be extricated. Certainly she will not listen to me any longer. I don't know if there is anyone who can reach her."

"I don't know either. But I'm trying." Mai took a long gulp of tea, burning her tongue in the process. She hesitated before saying what she wanted to say next. "You prioritized Zuko."

Iroh set his cup down and shook his head. He looked very grave, and somehow it made him seem much older. Mai didn't know how far apart in age Iroh and Ozai were, but he looked so much older than his brother.

"I did."

"Why? Couldn't you have tried for both? You must have seen that Ursa wasn't there for Azula. You must have seen she needed somebody else." _How could you leave her alone with him? Didn't you ever suspect? Couldn't you look at Ozai and tell that he couldn't be trusted?_ Mai kept her tone even. It felt very wrong to say these things to someone she so respected.

"I am not proud of it, Mai. But I have always found Azula...difficult."

"What does that _mean_?"

"She reminds me of myself when I was young. Forceful, single-minded, pursuing her goals and not caring about the collateral damage."

"You were like _that_?" Mai found it very hard to believe. It was certainly impossible for her to imagine the man sitting in front of her dealing out insults with a smile, or scornfully decrying his brother as an idiot, or lighting a cigarette and putting out the match on his own skin.

Iroh chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. "To be honest, I was probably worse. And my brother, always trying to catch up, desperate to prove himself. Eventually, I wondered if it wasn't my fault he turned out how he did. In Zuko I saw a second chance."

"A second son?" Mai said sardonically.

Iroh looked sharply at her.

"Azula told me about Lu Ten."

"I haven't outgrown all of my wretchedness, sorry to say." Iroh's smile, when it came, was cold. And if only for an instant, Mai _could_ see the resemblance there. It was more than a little unsettling. "You may be right about that too.

"But in Azula, all I could see was my own shame and scorn. I avoided her when I could, tried not to let it show when I couldn't, and by the time I came to my senses it was too late."

"It's not too late."

"You're very persistent." At last Iroh picked up his cup again, and some of the tension seemed to dissolve. "Perhaps you're right. I can be stubborn too. Maybe my niece could benefit from some of my stubbornness."

"Thank you," Mai said. "For listening."

They finished their tea, and Iroh offered food, which Mai, having not yet had breakfast, couldn't refuse. She was happy to be back in that apartment, reliving the days she had been there with Zuko, warm beside the table with a mug in her hands.

At last she felt it was time to go. Iroh escorted her to the door, and she had just crossed the threshold when he spoke.

"Are you going to see Zuko while you're here?"

She shook her head. "I don't think I deserve to see him. I don't have anything to say. Will you...tell him? About me and Azula?"

"Of course not. Telling him will be your decision. But as you reminded me, I will remind you: don't give up on reconciliation."

Mai smiled. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

It was past noon by the time she returned to the huge old house. Her meeting with Iroh had left Mai feeling good, almost serene, but out of his presence it didn't take long for the feeling to go as well. Then she was left with nothing but the dull anticipation of what awaited her.

Whatever she'd said to Iroh, whatever her anger on Azula's behalf, now she herself was dreading the return. She wondered what other hideous surprises were lying in wait. She wondered how many it would take to get rid of her.

She wondered whether Azula really was a lost cause.

The same cold-eyed, put-together girl who'd bade Mai farewell that morning opened the door when she rang the bell. And whatever the somber thoughts that crowded her mind, it was a relief to see her standing there. She was alive. She was still breathing. That in itself was hope, wasn't it?

"Welcome home, darling," Azula purred, throwing the door open and stepping back to let Mai in.

"Shut up."

"You were gone longer than I expected."

"Were you afraid I ran?"

Azula's smile disappeared. In lieu of an answer, she took a drag from the cigarette between her fingers. Mai wondered how many she'd been through that day.

How many cigarettes did it take to kill a person?

"I just went out for breakfast like you told me, and then I walked around," Mai lied. "It's been a while since I've been here."

"I thought you might visit your parents."

"The only person I'd be interested in visiting is Tom-Tom. I'm not going back to that house. I can imagine how my mom would look at me. She's great at radiating disappointment." Even the few phone conversations Mai'd had with Michi since leaving had been nigh unbearable. Guilt was Michi's primary weapon, one she used with both skill and impunity.

"It must be a parental thing." Azula was leading the way to the stairs. When they passed the dining room, Mai saw a bowl used as a makeshift ashtray. She couldn't count the number of discarded cigarette butts in it.

"I thought your father just throttled you when he was upset with you," Mai said. She tried to make it sound flippant, but instead it came out angry.

Azula paused and looked over her shoulder, smiling humorlessly. "Actually, I think the worst times were when he didn't touch me at all."

That shut Mai up. They continued upstairs. On the top floor, the door opposite Azula's was open. Mai had never been in there, but now she saw it was another bedroom, larger than Azula's. There was light streaming in through the windows and the open door.

It had been torn apart.

There were piles of ripped fabric on the ground, sheets and clothes that had been torn apart. Broken glass left a deadly trail across the floor. A lamp had been thrown to the ground. Parts of the mattress appeared to have been gouged out. A picture frame was lodged _inside_ one wall, the plaster cracked around it.

"Was this like this before?" Mai couldn't help but stare at the wreckage. Dimly she supposed this must have been Ozai's room. She supposed that those were his clothes lying destroyed on the floor.

"Oh, I had a busy morning," Azula said breezily. She made to close the door, but Mai caught it and stood in the doorway. The glass glinting on the floor made her reluctant to go any further, but she edged her way in where she saw a clear trail.

"How are we supposed to clean this up? This is _suspicious._ This is really fucking suspicious." And Mai supposed the duty would fall to her, as had scrubbing Ozai's blood from the tile, as had deciding what to do with him, as had _every step of the damned operation—_

"You're right, of course. I should have broken myself instead." Her voice was quiet. She was still smiling when Mai turned to look at her.

"I did _not_ say that."

"You didn't have to."

Mai had no other words. This was all guilt and anger and the certainty that all of it was futile. Why was she still there? Why was she still bothering? Couldn't her conscience let her run and leave this _mess_ behind?

She ran her hands through the pile of cloth. There was a suit jacket there, shredded as if by a knife, and what had once been an undershirt. But there was also lace and silk and satin, the chains Ozai had bought to dress his daughter.

There was blood staining the glass. Mai looked back at Azula. She was wearing socks.

"Let me see your feet," she said. She left the ruined room behind her and closed the distance between them.

Azula crossed her arms and looked away.

"They don't hurt."

" _Show_ me."

She lifted one foot. Mai sort of expected it, but expecting didn't make seeing the horrible red-brown stain on the bottom of the cloth any easier. She pulled the sock off as carefully as she could. Azula hissed, but her face gave no pain away.

There were bloody incisions marring the sole of her foot. Mai couldn't begin to imagine what it had felt like. This was something entirely different from taking a razor to her shoulder. Azula had trodden on the glass on purpose, hadn't she?

She jerked her foot away. Azula was wearing a contemptuous glare.

"Whatever you're about to say, don't."

Mai stood and did not heed the warning. "What am I doing here?"

"What?" This clearly was not among the responses Azula had expected.

"Why did you call me?"

"Because I'd just murdered my father, in case you don't remember. God, Mai, it was only two days a—"

"Why did you call _me_?"

Azula paused before answering this time. "Of my _very_ limited options, you were the only one who knows about—it."

"So that's it, then." It felt sort of freeing, Mai supposed, the same way it had when she'd finally accepted that her parents cared only for her as their daughter and nothing for her as her own person. Iroh had been right. And she'd just been an idiot. "It could have been anyone."

"By my criteria, it could only have been you."

"But not because of me. Just because of the circumstances."

"What are you really trying to say?"

"You don't care about me. I'm just convenient for you. And I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I'm bothering."

"Are you leaving?" The anger on Azula's face was tinged with fear. It gave Mai no pleasure to see it, but it didn't make her feel remorse either.

"What's the point of staying?" She'd spoken to Iroh. She'd spoken to Ursa. Hadn't she done enough?

"You told me you would. You told me you'd stay." Azula was hissing through her teeth. She was like a wolverine, some small predator cornered against the wall and baring her fangs. Mai looked at her and felt nothing.

"You told me you'd try."

"What do you _think_ I'm doing?"

Mai gestured at the trashed room, at the glass and the cloth, an old life coming apart. "Is this trying? You're just using me. And I don't hate it as much as I should, but that's not a reason to stay. I was better in Tokyo. I was better away from you."

"Don't you know what'll happen if you go?" The fear was becoming more pronounced. The anger was receding. But the threat was still very evident.

Mai swallowed and forced her face to remain impassive. "You told me this morning your life is your own. Not your father's. Not mine. I can't keep you alive. Hell, I can hardly keep myself alive."

"Why are you saying that? Are you really that stupid?" Azula's eyes were wide, her voice quiet and acerbic. "Do you think I would be alive right now if you hadn't come? Are you so _desperate_ to know that I was looking up how to tie a noose before it occurred to me to call you?" Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were gleaming.

Mai was transfixed, torn between the certainty that this was all just another ploy and the suffocating desire to believe her.

"Yes, I wanted to use you. I wanted to take you and rub you in Zuko's face and then throw you away. And I told myself that was all I wanted when you invited me on that date and when I brought you here the first time. I lied to myself more than I ever lied to you. I didn't end it because I didn't care about you. I ended it because, in spite of myself, in spite of _everything_ I'd set out to do, I ended up—wanting you."

Azula exhaled sharply and turned the other way. She seemed to set herself in stone again. Her face visibly hardened, and her voice became cold.

"It doesn't matter. You're right. You aren't responsible for this. It was only a matter of time. Just go, and take me off your conscience. But for what it's worth, I was trying. This was me trying for you."

There was a horrible pressure twisting Mai's insides. She didn't think she could speak. She could only stare, stare at this girl she had loved and hated, and wonder why the words she had so desperately wanted to hear didn't make her feel good at all.

"I'm sorry," she said honestly. "I didn't know—you felt like that."

"That's more than a little stupid of you, isn't it," Azula said. Still she refused to look at Mai. "Well, go on. If you're going to leave, leave."

"I'm not leaving," Mai said. "You're trying. I'm staying."

Azula smiled. "You just wanted to hear me say it, didn't you? God, you're just like Father."

That hurt more than a little. This time it was Mai who looked away.

The kiss took her by surprise. Azula's hand was twining in Mai's hair, hard, _hard,_ and their lips were pressed together, and Mai's knees buckled and left her laying on the floor as Azula's fingers slid into her pants, into her underwear, into her.

"What are we doing?" Mai gasped when she finally broke away to breathe. Her own hands were busy ripping Azula's hair from its bun, trying to get her shirt off her. "What is this?"

"We're trying," Azula growled into her neck. Her fingers continued their relentless exploration of Mai, stroking her walls, slicker and wetter by the second. "We're _living._ "

"I don't know what you want from me."

"Right now? You could scream my name." Azula's breath was hot and lustful against Mai's chest. Mai's head rocked back against the floor, and she had to bite back a grunt of pain. It was very uncomfortable here, but she didn't want to move. She wanted to kiss Azula again.

"I don't know what I want from you."

"I don't think I can answer that for you." Azula's thumb was stroking Mai's clit. Mai's hips rocked up to meet her, grinding against her fingers, relishing every touch.

"I love you."

"I love hearing that from you."

"Kiss me."

When they were done, there was nothing else to do but lay, exhausted, on the floor, side by side, facing up at the ceiling, their bare skin brushing together. Azula somehow extracted cigarettes and lighter from her discarded pants pocket, and breath by breath filled the room with the scent of ash.

"Mai?"

"Yes?"

"I'm a murderer. I'm a monster."

"He was the monster."

"...I'll go to the doctor."

"I'll go with you."

"Mai."

"Yes?"

"He's dead."

"Yes."

"I'm alive."

"Yes."

"You're here."

"Yes."


	3. Chapter 3

Somehow, before Mai knew it, a week had passed. A week in Kyoto. A week of increasingly angry messages from her manager and coworkers, before one final voicemail informing her she was terminated. Mai listened to it and felt nothing but a strange exhilaration.

It was happening again. She was moving on.

A week of watching Azula on tenterhooks. A week of being roughly shaken awake in the night, her lover's cheeks wet and face angry. A week of hickeys on her neck and cigarette burns on her hip, her lips swollen and overused, her back covered in scratches. A week of terror and euphoria.

A week, Mai thought more than a little wryly, of being Azula's housewife.

Azula began attending classes again, which left Mai more time than she knew what to do with. She began cursory searches both for a job and for a university, but she was reluctant to put much effort into either. Some part of her still resisted the idea of staying.

Yamanaka, the house's resident cook, returned to work. She asked no questions about Mai's presence, only keeping her well-fed and always offering a smile. Mai had a great deal of questions she wanted to ask the woman, but she didn't know how to ask any of them. Did the chef suspect what had happened to her employer?

Somehow they hadn't been caught. Ozai's disappearance was no longer a secret. The police asked them questions, opened a case, but the knife block and the bathtub went uninvestigated. The office phone seemed to always be ringing with impatient queries concerning company business. When Azula was home, she'd answer them, barking orders with a confidence that suggested that the people on the other end of the line were used to receiving instructions from their CEO's nineteen-year-old daughter.

The pair of them went to the doctor, as Azula had promised, and a date for surgery was set. They didn't talk about it much—the awful blank despair that always overtook Azula's face when the topic was breached made Mai eager to avoid it.

Mai stopped asking Azula if she was okay after the second or third day. She didn't think she could stand to hear the same answer another time.

She was still waiting to hear from Ursa. She'd given the woman her cell number during their conversation, but Azula's mother had yet to call. She hadn't known exactly when she would be returning, though she'd said she intended to come as soon as possible. Perhaps, if she was following it, the story of Ozai's disappearance would encourage her.

It was a dull, dreary day, Azula at the university and Mai alone in a house where she didn't belong, when her phone rang. She expected Ursa, having no idea who else would be bothering to call her. But it wasn't Ursa. Mai looked at the name on the screen and felt much as she had when Azula had called.

"This is Mai," she answered, hoping she didn't sound too nervous, wondering if Iroh had gone back on his word. "...Zuko?"

"How'd you know?"

"There's this thing called caller ID."

"You never deleted my number?" He didn't sound angry or upset or even serious. He sounded happy. A dull ache started up in Mai's stomach.

"Well..."

"I just wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?" As she could remember, she'd done nothing worth thanks. She'd cheated on him with his sister and lied to him about it. The last time she'd seen him, he had slammed the door in her face.

"She said you called her. She said you're the reason she came back."

"Oh, Zuko—you saw your mother?" Mai couldn't stop a little smile from curling her lips. She tried to imagine what kind of a reunion that would have been. Did he harbor any resentment for her long absence, the way Azula did? Or was he all too willing to forgive her just to feel his mother's arms around him again?

"Mai, it was incredible. I was just leaving class, and she was standing across the courtyard. I sort of glanced at her, and I thought there was no chance, so I kept walking. But then she was saying my name, and it was really her. It was really her. I can't—I can't believe it." His voice cracked a little.

"I'm so glad."

"She said it was you who called her. I don't understand. How did you find her?"

"Uh, that's a long story." Mai was already worried enough about Ursa discovering what had happened to her husband. She wasn't about to open that can of worms with Zuko as well; not yet, anyway. "I'm glad you're happy. That you got to see her."

"Where are you? What are you doing?"

Talking to him like this was strange. Mai wondered if he'd still be as friendly if he knew what she'd been doing with his sister for the past week. But he seemed to have forgiven her for their breakup two years ago. Maybe bringing Ursa back was enough to make up for all her sins.

Mai shook her head as if to clear the thoughts from it. She'd betrayed Zuko. She was with Azula. She wasn't going to relive the past. It was enough just to talk to him, to imagine the bad blood was gone.

"I'm..." She considered how flagrant a lie she would attempt and settled on simplicity. "I'm in Kyoto again, just for a little while. I've been in Tokyo, though, bartending, waitressing, that sort of thing."

"Are you getting by okay? Are your parents helping you out?"

"As if," she snorted. "I'm fine, though. I don't care. Being away from them is worth it, even if I can't rely on anyone else. But how are _you_? I heard the news about Ozai—about your father."

"Yeah, there's that," Zuko said, and some of the glee faded from his voice. Mai could imagine him running a hand through his unkempt hair. She remembered tousling it herself. Hearing his voice was making her miss him. "I don't know what to think. I mean, he has to turn up eventually, right? He can't be _gone._ "

"I don't know," Mai said. The lie burned on her tongue. But Zuko would be better off without Ozai, even if he didn't yet know it. "I'm sorry."

"As horrible as it sounds, seeing Mom again kind of makes up for it."

She smiled. "I don't think it sounds horrible at all."

The silence, then, stretched long and thin and awkward. Mai didn't know how it felt to talk to him again. She was thinking of the last time. She was thinking of meeting Azula and knowing what she was doing was wrong. She was remembering shoving Zuko aside to pursue her own lust. She didn't really regret it, but when she heard his voice, she wondered if she should have. Everything had been so much easier with him. Zuko hadn't _hurt_ the way Azula did.

She stared across the table to where Azula's dishes still sat. On the rim of her teacup, as always, there was a familiar smear of red.

She'd chosen her. She would not regret it. She could not regret it.

"What are you doing back in Kyoto?" Zuko finally asked.

"Just visiting," she said vaguely. "Nothing exciting."

"Well, if you're going to be here much longer, I'd like to see you. Catch up."

"I'd like that too," she said. Her hand tightened around the phone. "I have some things I have to tell you."

"Like what?"

"I'll save them for in person. And Zuko?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry, again, about last time. About how it ended. It was my fault. I fucked up, and I know I fucked up, and I don't deserve your forgiveness."

"Yeah, you do. I've done shitty stuff too. And I was childish. I shouldn't have been so angry. We should have talked about it, at least."

"Yeah," she said, and even as she wondered whether he'd say that if he knew it was Azula, she felt some of the weight lifted from her chest."Okay. It was good to talk."

"Mai, thanks again. For bringing my mother back."

"Yeah. Bye."

"Bye."

Mai tossed her phone onto the table and stood. She collected Azula's dishes and brought them into the kitchen to be washed. She scrubbed at the red mark on the rim of the teacup and wondered if this was what happiness felt like. She wondered if she'd ever know for sure.

* * *

Ursa did not bear as strong a resemblance to her daughter in person as she had in the photographs, Mai discovered the day after Zuko's phone call.

Mai supposed that time, too, made a difference. Now the woman's face was lined and wrinkled, and her hair seemed to be more silver than black. She carried bags under her eyes that suggested a lack of sleep, not just for the past few days, but for a lifetime.

Mai had the fleeting thought that perhaps if Ozai saw his wife now, he wouldn't be so quick to pursue her.

Nevertheless, Ursa still carried herself with a dignity reminiscent of her daughter, and when Mai got her attention from across the cafe and the woman smiled, she looked a little bit younger.

"You're Mai?" she said. She was surprisingly tall, certainly taller than Azula. Her voice was lower in person than it had sounded on the phone. "Well, you certainly don't look like a private investigator."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Mai mumbled, suddenly all too aware of her choppy bangs and the chipped black polish on her fingernails.

They sat at a table by the window. Mai thought of how she'd been out for coffee with Zuko, with Azula, and now with their mother. Maybe she should have tried to get Ozai before he died, and she could have completed the set.

She didn't really know when this family's business had become hers. She couldn't clearly remember her time before Zuko. She could hardly even remember a week ago, how she'd felt before Azula had called.

"How was seeing Zuko?"

"Hold on," Ursa interrupted. Her eyes had a similarly piercing look to Azula's, even if her expression lacked the intensity to back it up. The flickers of similarity were jarring. "You told me that Ozai was dead. I get here and the news is that he's missing."

"Well..." Mai hesitated. She tapped her fingers against the rim of her cup. "Him being dead isn't strictly public knowledge."

"Then whose knowledge is it?"

"These are really questions for Azula."

Ursa sighed, but seemed to accept the answer. She took a long drink from her mug. Mai noticed that her nails, though kept short, were perfectly manicured. Another trait mother and daughter shared.

"Seeing Zuko was—indescribable. He's grown so much. He's a man now. He didn't seem angry at all. I'm afraid I distracted him from his schoolwork; we spent all afternoon together. He seemed so eager to tell me about his life." Ursa's eyes were distant, her lips ostensibly smiling but her face very sad. "I wanted to hear it. All of it. Everything I couldn't be there for."

"That sounds nice," Mai said, not really knowing what else to say.

Ursa looked at her, and her smile became a little more genuine. "You told me on the phone that you were Zuko's friend. You didn't mention being his ex."

Mai gave a noncommittal grunt. "Did he tell you about the breakup?"

"No. Would you like to?"

"You remember when you told me on the phone that you felt like you didn't deserve to be a part of your children's lives any longer?"

Ursa nodded.

"Two years ago, I felt the same way about Zuko, and I walked out of his life. We hadn't talked until he called me yesterday to say he'd seen you."

Mai took a self-conscious sip of her latte. She was much less comfortable talking about this with Ursa than she'd been with Iroh. She wondered if the woman was looking at her and seeing how unworthy Mai had ever been for Zuko. Despite her sweater, Mai felt as if the scars of her shoulders were bare and telling of all her insufficiencies. She was hardly even a whole person. She could never suffice as a good enough lover.

She and Azula were a better match. Their broken edges only cut each other. No good people had to be hurt.

"A call is a step forward," Ursa said. "Perhaps you're on the way to reconciliation. He certainly seemed fond of you when he spoke of you yesterday."

That hurt a little. "He wouldn't if he knew the whole story."

"Love and forgiveness go hand in hand."

Mai snorted. As Azula had once told her, the resemblance between mother and daughter really did seem to be superficial.

"I don't really feel that way about Zuko anymore. I mean, I still care about him, but I'm seeing someone else now."

"Oh, I see." Ursa looked away. "I shouldn't really be talking about this. I'm the last person in the world who should be giving out relationship advice."

Mai thought of the pictures of the smiling couple. She supposed she should probably say that whatever happened wasn't Ursa's fault, but the words refused to come out.

"Are you sad about him?"

Ursa's eyes fixed on Mai again.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about that."

"Fair enough."

"So why did you ask to meet me?"

Mai glanced at her phone to check the time. Azula would undoubtedly text her when she got home from class and realized Mai wasn't there. They probably had fifteen minutes or so. Fifteen minutes to deliver a warning that she had no idea how to articulate.

"I thought it would be best if we had a chance to speak before you see Azula." In some ways, Mai wanted to tell Ursa to not bother visiting her daughter. She had no doubt that it would be brutal for both parties. Any chance of reconciliation, if there even was a chance, seemed a very distant thing. But she had no way to tell that to the woman sitting across from her without saying much more than she intended to say.

"And why is that?"

Surely she had some inkling.

"You said Zuko wasn't angry."

"But my daughter is." It wasn't a question. Ursa was smiling again. Her smiles only made her look sadder.

"Yes." Mai absently traced the grain of the wood with her fingers. She didn't like looking at Ursa. "Look, the reason I said we should go over there together is because I think otherwise she might just refuse to see you. Hell, she still might."

"No more than I deserve."

"No, look," Mai said, a little impatiently. She needed to say what she was trying to say. She needed to prepare Ursa for what she was walking into. "I'm serious. Even if she does agree to talk to you, she's going to say things that are very hard to hear."

"Mai, I appreciate the warning," Ursa said. Her hand slid forward on the table as if to touch Mai's, though there was still space between them. "But I know. Since you called, and even before that, I have thought about this. I've imagined what my children must think of me, the things they would say to me. Whatever Azula says, even if she turns her back on me, she cannot loathe me more than I already loathe myself. She cannot say things I have not already thought."

"But that's what I'm saying," Mai said. Unease was growing in her stomach. Ursa wasn't listening, and she didn't know how much more she could say without giving herself away. "There is—she may tell you things that _do_ surprise you. That—horrify you. Things you can't be prepared for."

Ursa's smile was gone. There was a hawkish expression in her eyes that, again, was so reminiscent of Azula.

"What exactly are you trying to tell me?"

Ozai with a knife in his stomach. Purple bruises around Azula's neck. A visit to the doctor to put an end to an ungodly mistake.

Mai looked away. "I'm just telling you to be prepared."

Her phone buzzed. It was Azula, right on time.

_Where are you?_

"Well, that's her." Mai stood, leaving her empty mug on the table. "Shall we go?"

She didn't feel she'd been entirely successful in saying what she wanted to say, but there was nothing else for it but to go. She'd bring Ursa to Azula, even if she regretted it, even if she was already regretting it.

"Yes." Ursa stood as well.

 _On my way,_ Mai wrote back, and then she stuffed her phone in her pocket and tried not to dwell on what was to come.

She spent the train ride away from downtown trying not to wonder about the ethics of forcing this reunion. She tried not to wonder whether Azula really would tell her mother about all that Ozai had done. She tried not to wonder if Ursa was really prepared to hear it.

The more she tried not to wonder, the more all she could do was think, until she found herself just as on-edge as she had been a week ago when Azula had called. Whatever was about to happen, Mai was only certain that it was going to be ugly.

Though it had been a decade since Ursa had been in the city, when they left the station she still seemed to know the way. She had long since left her smile behind. Her face seemed to grow more and more lined as they approached the old house.

When at last they were there, Ursa stopped at the foot of the driveway. She stared up at the house she hadn't visited for ten years. Her face was white and fearful.

"Are you okay?"

"He's not—you _swear_ to me he's not waiting for me?" Ursa's voice was still level, whatever her face showed.

"He's not. He's gone."

The woman shook her head and seemed to steel herself.

"I can do this. I have to do this."

She seemed to be speaking to herself, so Mai did not respond.

Without looking to see if Mai was beside her, Ursa strode up the driveway.

Azula had been reluctant to give Mai a house key, but Mai had eventually won that argument, so she withdrew said key from her pocket and followed Ursa. She stepped aside to let Mai fidget with the lock, though she looked surprised.

The door came open. Mai stepped in and pulled off her shoes.

"I'm back," she called. Her voice managed not to quaver.

There was a pause and then footsteps on the stairs.

"Where were you? Shopping? You can make Yamanaka do that, you know." Then Azula was rounding the corner, all sleek and elegant perfection with her hair tied back and a smoking cigarette in her fingers. And then she took sight of the person standing behind Mai, and then her face was ashen, and her crimson lips were parting in a snarl.

"Azula," Ursa said quietly.

Azula turned her head sharply away. She took a few slow, calculating breaths, clearly struggling to bring her expressions back under her control. Still looking away, she spoke.

"Mai, I believe I'm seeing things," she said. Each word was measured and careful.

"Azula—"

" _You see_ ," Azula continued doggedly, "I think I'm seeing my mother standing on my doorstep, and I'm _quite certain that I don't have a mother._ "

Ursa stepped forward. Her hands were held out, palm-up, a gesture of surrender. Mai idly thought that would only make Azula angrier. But maybe the sight of her mother desperate for forgiveness would bring Azula some satisfaction anyway.

"You're right," Ursa said. Her voice was calm. "I don't deserve to call myself that."

"You don't deserve to speak to me," Azula snarled. Her eyes glanced her mother's way before determinedly ignoring her again. Mai could see the slight tremble of her lips, the way her hands were reflexively straining as if searching for something to grab onto. "Mai. Get her out of my sight, now."

Mai sighed. She had no doubt that this little stunt was going to make Azula more than a little angry with her.

"No. Azula, I brought her here. Please, give her a chance. Give it a chance."

"Traitor," Azula hissed. "Why would you think I would want to see her? Couldn't have asked me? Couldn't have _warned_ me?"

"I—well, I knew you wouldn't say yes," Mai said lamely.

"And that was my choice to make!" Her eyes were overly bright, Mai realized with an unpleasant jolt in her stomach. "Are you so determined to strip that from me?"

"Please, Azula, don't blame her." Ursa stepped between the two of them. Mai wished she hadn't; Azula's mother was undoubtedly in for a much rougher time than Mai was. "I wanted to see you. She couldn't have stopped me. Nobody could."

"Really? Because it seems like _somebody_ did a good job of that for the past ten years." An ugly sneer overtook Azula's face. She was shorter than her mother, but she still seemed to tower over both of them, huge in her anger.

"I'm sorry." There was a crack in Ursa's voice as she bowed her head to her daughter. "I don't deserve to be here. And you're right—if you don't want to see me, that's your choice. I'll go."

Azula stared down at her mother for several infinitely long seconds. Her expression was calmer now, though still steely. Mai thought her lover must be enjoying the sight of Ursa prostrating herself. Indeed, she thought the only reason Azula would agree to have any contact whatsoever would be the chance to hurt Ursa.

Hurt Ursa the way Ursa had hurt her.

"No, _Mother_ ," Azula said finally, in a voice like ice. "Stay. There's so much I've wanted to say to you."

"I'll leave you two alone," Mai said, edging toward the door.

"No, Mai." Azula was beckoning her. "You too. Stay."

Mai sighed again, certain she was in for a very unpleasant time, and moved to join Azula. To her surprise, Azula laced their fingers together and leaned up to whisper in Mai's ear. Her breath tickled, not entirely unpleasantly.

"You'll pay for this."

"Don't I always," Mai muttered under her breath.

Without another look at her mother, Azula pulled Mai toward the dining room. Mai looked back over her shoulder to see Ursa following more slowly. The older woman was looking around, observing the changes in the house she had inhabited a lifetime ago.

"Yamanaka, we need tea for three," Azula barked.

"Certainly. Who's-?" The question died in the chef's mouth as she came out of the kitchen and saw Ursa standing in the dining room. " _Ursa?_ "

"Reika!"

They embraced each other. Azula made a noise of impatience, and when Mai glanced over she saw her rolling her eyes. But Mai thought it was nice to see the two hugging each other. It was nice to think that Ursa had someone here after all.

"I can't believe you're still here," Ursa said as they pulled apart.

"Well, you know," Yamanaka said, eyes watering, "there's not a whole lot else out there. But you—you're really here. How long has it—"

"Enough!" Azula interrupted the reunion with a single command and the wave of her hand. "Yamanaka, _tea,_ and then you can take the rest of the afternoon off."

The cook paused, glancing between mother and daughter. Mai didn't have to look at Azula's face to know it was a mistake.

"You will listen to _me,_ not my mother, and I'm telling you to make tea and leave, unless you would like to look for another career!"

She did not need telling twice. Yamanaka disappeared back into the kitchen, and a second later they heard the clatter of cups and saucers.

"There. Mother, have a seat." Azula indicated a chair.

Ursa hesitated before sitting, but she finally seemed to decide that it was best not to argue. When she'd sat, Azula took her own place across the table. Mai made to sit next to her, but Azula stopped her.

"No. Here." And without warning, she pulled Mai onto her lap. It was not a comfortable seat, made even less so by Ursa's eyes on both of them. But Mai didn't object, even when Azula slid an arm around her waist. If Azula wanted her as a shield, then so be it.

The minutes while they waited for the tea were agonizing. Nobody spoke, so the only sound was the clinking from the next room. Azula did not take her eyes off her mother for a second. She was as still as a statue, except for the hand holding her cigarette, which she brought to her lips every now and again. Her other hand felt like a vise on Mai's hip. Azula's breath was tickling her neck in a way that would have been very pleasant had Ursa not been _right there._

Azula's mother, for her part, was plainly uncomfortable. She did not meet Azula's steady glare, rather fixing her eyes on the opposite wall. Her glance would flick over at the pair of them and back again.

Mai wondered if the seating arrangement was evidence enough for who had replaced Zuko in her life. She knew there were much more important things to be discussed, but she was stuck on that. Her relationship with Azula felt like something to be kept behind closed doors. Showing it to others, especially to Zuko and Azula's mother, made Mai feel...naked.

At last Yamanaka reemerged. She placed the tray of tea and little cakes on the table and nodded to each of them. She, at least, seemed unsurprised to see Mai and Azula in such close quarters; Azula hadn't been subtle in her displays of _affection_ over the past week. The cook's eyes lingered on Ursa, and the two exchanged another tremulous smile before Azula impatiently waved her away.

They heard the front door open and close, and then the silence was absolute.

Ursa broke it.

"Cigarettes?" she said, seemingly unable to help herself.

Azula's hand on Mai's waist tightened.

"If only someone had been here to stop me," she said sardonically.

Ursa looked away as if she'd been slapped.

"I know I failed you. I came here—"

"I'm over it," Azula said. The cold detachment of her voice made her sound genuine. Mai wondered if Ursa believed her. She wondered if Azula believed herself.

"I see." Ursa folded her hands on the table. Her knuckles were white. Maybe her fingers had been shaking.

"So what do you have to say to me?"

"Where is your father?"

"He's dead."

"What happened to him?"

"I killed him." Azula's voice was ice. There was no shred of emotion in it, no shred of weakness. Her nails were digging into Mai's side. Her cigarette was nearing its end.

Ursa blinked. She did not seem to believe her daughter. Mai couldn't particularly blame her for that.

"Why?"

"Because I'm _pregnant._ " Somehow Azula made it sound exasperated, as if this was all old news, a story she was sick of telling people.

Ursa looked at Mai, and Mai stared down at the table. It had occurred to her that Ursa might not believe it, any of it. What were they to do if she denied the whole thing? What would Azula do? It was hard enough for Mai to believe sometimes. Surely it would seem impossible to disappear for ten years and come home to something as monstrous as this.

But Ursa had ran, and she knew Ozai had been following her; she must have seen some of the man's perversion.

"Azula, I don't want to play games."

A pit was settling into Mai's stomach. This had been a mistake. She should have planned ahead, prepared something, done something else.

Azula smiled.

"I expect nothing and I'm still disappointed. Isn't that amazing, Mother?"

"What—"

"I don't want to play games either. I tell the truth and nobody believes me, so I laugh and say it was a lie all along. Shall I do that? Shall I tell you that Father's still alive? That he didn't hurt me at all? That your daughter's more human than _thing_?"

"Azula, I want to believe you." Ursa's brow was furrowed, her voice still gentle. Clearly she had no idea what to make of the scene in front of her.

"Don't say that!" For the first time Azula's careful facade was shattered. Her fist came down hard onto the table, snubbing the cigarette butt into death on the polished wood. All three of them looked at it.

Azula's nails felt in danger of breaking skin. Mai shifted uncomfortably, but if Azula got the hint, she ignored it.

The tea sat untouched in the middle of the table.

Mai spoke for the first time. "Please remember what I told you."

"Yes, what _did_ you tell her?"

Mai could feel Azula's eyes boring into her. The hand that had rested on her waist suddenly shifted to press insistently on the clothed space between Mai's legs.

" _Azula_ ," Mai hissed, though there was no way Ursa didn't hear. At least she couldn't _see,_ not unless she looked under the table.

" _Mai_ ," Azula retorted, and her fingers ground cruelly against Mai.

Mai gritted her teeth, supposing that compliance was the best option. "I told her that you had things to say that were going to be hard to hear."

"You were considerate enough to give her a warning, but not me? I'm touched."

Azula didn't need touch to hurt her, after all; the bitterness in her voice was more than enough to do the trick. Mai looked away.

"Go get me a damp washcloth," Azula ordered, and she all but shoved Mai off of her. She managed to catch herself on the table. She glared, but Azula didn't meet her eyes. With nothing else to do, she obeyed, heading for the first-floor bathroom.

When she returned with the rag, Azula had pulled a cup of tea toward herself and was sipping from it. Ursa had taken one as well, but it sat untouched in front of her. The woman was staring into space. Mai wondered whether she'd really been prepared for things to go this badly. They had hardly even gotten into dangerous territory.

Azula took the cloth from Mai's hands without bothering to thank her. She scrubbed it along her throat and then across her face. Slowly the concealer rubbed away, revealing the bruises underneath. They weren't so bad now as they had been a week ago, but still they were obvious, purplish and greenish and brown as they healed.

Once she was done, Azula threw the washcloth onto the table and pulled Mai back onto her lap. Mai reached for the last cup of tea just for something to do with her hands.

"I know it must be impossible to believe me, Mother." Azula was smooth as silk now. "What is it Zuko loves to say? 'Azula always lies?'"

"So you're _not_ lying?" Ursa's voice was quiet and steady, even if her fingers were still white where she gripped the teacup.

"I can assure you that everything I'm about to say is the truth. But when it's just my word, who can blame you for doubting? Mai did too, didn't she?"

"Hey." Mai did not particularly appreciate that.

"If you say you're telling the truth, all I can do is try to believe you, isn't it?" Ursa swallowed, and then motioned vaguely between the two of them. "You two are-?"

"Does it disgust you?" Azula's free hand slid upward to caress Mai's cheek and lips. Mai did not appreciate this, either, being used as a shield and a weapon against Azula's mother. But as she'd brought Ursa here, giving Azula no warning, she supposed she deserved it.

"No," Ursa said quietly. "So...your father?"

"Azula, maybe you should start at the beginning," Mai said.

"The beginning? Well, I was born in a hospital in Dubai—"

"Azula."

"Fine. But there's no use telling her anything if she's just going to deny it. And she will deny it." Azula was ostensibly speaking to Mai, but her eyes remained fixed on her mother. The stare was more than a little rude. She'd hardly averted her eyes since they sat down. "Who wouldn't?"

Mai thought she understood Azula's aversion. To her, sharing such things about herself was admitting weaknesses, cracks in her perfect facade. And as loathsome as it must have felt to show those cracks to Mai, or to strangers, it must have been a thousand times more so to contemplate showing this woman. Azula had been steel since her mother had walked in the door. She did not want to show anything but that.

"Try," Mai said. The squeeze on her waist told her that Azula had understood all she meant to convey with that simple three-letter word.

Ursa was not holding her daughter's stare, but she was undoubtedly listening just as intently. Had she expected this of Azula? Mai wondered. The circularity, the answers that weren't really answers. Or had that all come after she disappeared, after Ozai had plenty of time to suckle Azula on his poison?

Azula took a deep breath. The silence stretched longer and longer, but Mai could tell that Azula was going to break it sooner or later. She'd finally looked away from Ursa. Now she was staring at the table. Her eyes were wide; her lips pursed.

"I was nine. You were gone, Grandfather was dead, and Iroh had moved out. He—Father—liked brushing my hair. It felt good. When he was done, he'd kiss my forehead. Then he started kissing my mouth. He said it meant he loved me."

Her tone was cold and brittle, not a shred of emotion in it. Her nails were digging into Mai's waist once more, but Mai didn't object.

Ursa was white.

"You remember I never really learned modesty, Mother? A five-year-old running around naked no matter how many times you told me not to? It suited him fine. It didn't bother me when he'd watch me in the bath, or getting dressed. It didn't bother me even when he started bathing with me, dressing me himself." Azula smiled down at the table. "I liked the attention. And you know, you were always so interested in criticizing me. Too mean, lacking manners, not ladylike enough. But Father would call me brilliant and beautiful and clever and perfect."

Her voice dropped to a whisper, but given the still silence of the room, Ursa undoubtedly still heard her.

"What little idiot wouldn't love that?"

"Azula," Ursa breathed. Apart from the movement of her lips, she might have been carved from stone. Her hand was still gripping her teacup, but she hadn't taken a drink from it since her daughter started speaking.

Even if Mai had expected it, endured too many of these stories since meeting Azula, it was not any easier to hear. The only thing she could think to do was grip Azula's hand in her own, but the other girl, unsurprisingly, pulled away.

Mai felt Azula pull the lighter out of her pocket. She managed to intercept her before Azula could burn herself. Instead, she wrapped Azula's hand around her own, setting the nails against her skin. She knew Azula had understood when she started squeezing.

Ursa, blind to their struggle underneath the table, waited silently. Azula sighed and began again.

"I must have been almost ten when I suppose he got tired of waiting. He told me it would hurt—and it did—and that he would make me feel good—and he did. And that was the beginning."

Azula's grip on Mai's hand was like a vise. Mai didn't mind. The pain made it easier for her, too, to hear the things she was hearing.

"He—he raped you?" Ursa's voice was surprisingly strong, considering what she had just heard.

Mai wondered if Azula was glad her mother wasn't crying, or if she would have preferred it that way.

"Well, something like that. I didn't ever really say no, did I?"

Mai very much wanted to say something about that, but she did not think this was the time. Once again a vast pit was opening in her stomach. She was again listening to Azula describing her father throttling her and casually saying she'd deserved it.

Ursa took an audible, shuddering breath.

"This...went on?"

"Until last week." Azula attempted a smirk and failed. Her gaze was still locked on the table. Her hand was still clutching Mai's for a lifeline. "When he wanted me. He had quite an appetite. But I suppose you know that, don't you?"

Ursa nodded mutely.

"He started me on birth control almost as soon as he started on me. God forbid his ten-year-old daughter conceive, right?" Azula's voice was shaking now. "And he certainly wouldn't be denied the pleasure of fucking me _raw_ —"

For the first time, Ursa flinched. The stone of her face threatened to split into something much less composed. But she focused her gaze on her teacup, and a few seconds later she was a statue once more.

Mai realized that Ursa was forcing herself to do this. She was holding herself together. She was trying.

Azula undoubtedly saw it as well. Her smile was gone. Her tone was businesslike once more.

"In any case, it worked well enough for the past decade, but I suppose our luck was bound to run out eventually. When I realized he'd knocked me up, I panicked and told him. He did _this—_ " Azula gestured at the bruises—"to me, and I stabbed him. And that's what happened."

The silence felt like a physical thing, crushing all three of them. It stretched longer and longer, as Azula's nails dug deep into Mai's skin, as Ursa stared at her teacup, as Mai wondered how this was going to end.

"Where is he now? Did you tell the police-?"

"We got rid of him. The police won't find him. They don't need to find out. You shouldn't tell them either, Mother." There was a distinct note of warning in Azula's tone.

It took Ursa a few moments to speak again. "He was doing that to you all this time?"

Azula smiled once more. It was a gruesome thing. "More than half my life, now I think about it."

Ursa's face was unreadable. She looked suddenly ancient, exhausted. But Mai thought, hopefully, that there was not doubt there.

"Did you tell anyone?"

"Who would I have told? Zuko's convinced I never tell the truth. Uncle's too busy fawning over Zuko. And who else is there, really?"

"The police. Someone. Anyone."

"I don't have to justify myself to you," Azula spat. Then she pulled herself together once more, resuming her staring contest with the wood of the table.

"No. No, you don't. I'm sorry." Ursa's voice was slightly tremulous. "You're right. I don't deserve to look at you."

"You think _that's_ why I can't stand looking at you? You think I hate you because of _that_?" Azula seemed to be rapidly losing control. Her hand was actively squeezing Mai's now, tighter and looser, tighter and looser, desperately seeking some physical relief from the emotions surging through her and finding none at all, judging by the pressure in her grip. "You're such an imbecile. It's not about that at all. It's not important. It's not _relevant_!"

"Then—what?"

"Do you want to pretend you were a perfect mother when you were in my life? Do you want to pretend you ever actually cared about me, aside from the image of the perfect daughter you wanted and just couldn't give up on?"

Azula's voice rose. She made to stand; Mai managed to anticipate the movement and got off in time. Azula's red-nailed hands slammed down onto the table.

"Do you want to pretend that you aren't here now out of simple obligation? Guilt? You've already visited Zuko, haven't you, and found him to be a delight, and now you've found me to be a horror. And you'll go and tell yourself that at least you tried, that I'm beyond help, that you didn't know what to do with me when I was a child and certainly don't know what to do with me now." Her voice was powerful even as it trembled. Mai and Ursa were both transfixed. Mai half-expected Azula to begin tearing up again, but her cheeks were bone-dry.

"I don't hold you in contempt for what Father did with me. I hold you in contempt for absolutely everything else. For—for— _why didn't you write me too_?" Azula's face was crumpling horribly, but still there was no sign of tears.

"What?"

"I know you wrote Zuko. Mai told me. I wouldn't have found out otherwise. That's what you thought, isn't it? You couldn't be bothered to waste ink on me. You were all too happy to leave me behind, weren't you? A mistake you could forget about. But why didn't you try? Why didn't you pretend you cared? Zuko had Uncle. Couldn't—couldn't you have possibly imagined that I might need someone too?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Ursa's eyes were overly bright. As her lips moved silently, the first tears slipped down her cheeks. Azula looked pointedly away.

"I...I didn't know what to say," Ursa whispered.

"Yeah, you never did." Azula wheeled around. "I'm done. I can't—Mai, you talk to her." And then she was hurrying out of the dining room. A second later they heard footsteps on the stairs.

Mai looked at Ursa. "I'm going to go after her."

Ursa nodded mutely.

Azula was in the third-floor bathroom, bracing herself against the marble counter of the sink. Her lighter was clutched in one hand; at a glance Mai could see the bright pink, blistering skin that spoke of fresh burns. There was a pack of cigarettes lying, ignored, on the counter. Azula's breath was coming in harsh, choking gasps.

"Azula—"

"I don't want to see you. I can't look at you. Why did you bring her here? Get out. Go get rid of her." True to her word, Azula did not look at her. Her gaze was fixed on her reflection.

Mai hovered in the doorway for a few more seconds. She was afraid that Azula was going to hurt herself, more than she already had, anyway. But she didn't think her presence would do anything to stitch the wound closed.

"Okay. Look—take care of yourself."

She closed the bathroom door behind her and returned downstairs, half-expecting Ursa to have disappeared in the meantime. But Azula's mother was still sitting where she'd been left, tears dripping down her cheeks, her stony gaze fixed on the far wall.

Mai settled herself into Azula's abandoned chair.

"I shouldn't have come," Ursa said.

"If you didn't, it would have confirmed everything she already thinks."

Ursa offered a humorless, watery smile. "She was right about everything else. What a coward I've been, afraid of my own daughter, even while she was faced with—good God, I can't imagine. It's my fault. He's my fault."

"It's his fault. Nobody else's."

"How could I just leave? I abandoned them, her, to—that? I should have stayed. He wouldn't have done it if I had stayed."

Mai was not enjoying this. She watched Ursa cry and felt nothing so much as annoyance, even as she hated herself for it. Speaking of such things with Azula was one thing, but finding herself forced to comfort a woman who was essentially a stranger to her was another thing entirely. She didn't know what to say.

"Well, you didn't. It's over now. All you have is the future, the daughter upstairs, not the one you left behind. So you can keep regretting it, or you can try to move forward."

"How am I not supposed to regret this? To not blame myself?"

"At least you believe her," Mai couldn't resist saying. "I wasn't sure you would."

Ursa's eyes adopted that piercing look that she shared with her daughter. She held Mai's gaze for a few seconds before looking away again.

"I don't want to believe it. It would be easier to think she's lying. But the man—" Her voice quavered. "The man that I married, he would be capable of it."

Mai very much wanted to pry, but she managed the restraint not to.

"It's easier for you than it was for me. He's dead now. You don't have to look at him and know what he's doing."

"How did you find out?"

"Oh..." Mai did not want to recount that. She didn't think she would even be willing to tell Iroh that story. Seeing Azula again, being with her the past week, had done a decent job of stitching up that particular wound, but still it ached. "Long story."

"Why didn't _you_ tell someone?" There was an accusatory note in Ursa's tone. Mai frowned.

"Long story," she repeated stubbornly.

Ursa lapsed into silence. She reached for her cup of tea and drank from it, though surely whatever was left in it was cold by now.

"She's pregnant?" she said, after several minutes' pause.

"Yes. We've been to the doctor. Surgery's next week."

"Thank you for being there for her," Ursa said abruptly.

"Of course," Mai said, and then she chose to charge recklessly ahead. "I love her."

"Ah."

"It bothers you, doesn't it?"

"Who am I to judge?" Ursa murmured into her teacup. "Zuko—does he know? That you left him for Azula?"

"No. He'd be furious. Please don't tell him. Don't tell him any of this." Mai was serious now. "It's Azula's...secret. It should be hers to tell, or to choose not to tell."

"Of course." There was another pause. Ursa stared down into her cup. She was avoiding looking at Mai, meeting her gaze. "Mai, please take care."

She understood. She stood from her chair and looked down at the woman on the other side of the table. That was the final nail in the coffin; she'd had enough of this conversation.

"I am not you," she said, wondering if her voice could be near as cold as Azula's, "and Azula is not her father. And I think you should go now."

"I didn't mean to—" Ursa sighed and shook her head.

Slowly she stood as well. Her tears had dried, leaving her eyes red and slightly puffy. Even more than when Mai had first seen her, she looked like a woman who had aged significantly in a very brief period of time. She looked exhausted. Mai supposed she should feel sorry for her, but she didn't. All her care was for the person upstairs, not for the one standing in front of her.

"May I say goodbye to her?"

Mai shrugged. "She's in the bathroom upstairs. I doubt she'll open the door, but you can try."

They went up the stairs together. Ursa was looking around, observing all the details of the house she had left behind ten years ago. When they reached the second floor, she seemed to want to stop and look into the rooms, but Mai continued up the stairs, and after a moment of hesitation she followed.

"Ozai let me remodel this bathroom when I moved in," Ursa said. "A honeymoon present."

"Yeah, Azula told me that when I said I liked it."

"Well, thank you." Ursa paused before the door and rapped her knuckles against it. "Azula?"

There was a long pause. Mai felt herself growing tenser and tenser, worried that she shouldn't have left her alone, that there would never be a response. But then Azula answered, and as cold and angry an answer it was, relief came flooding into Mai.

"I told Mai to get rid of you."

"I'll go. But first, Azula, I need to say that you—you were right about a great many of the things you said about me. You deserve to hate me. You deserve to never want to see me again. But you'll be wrong about this time. I won't turn my back on you. I won't leave you again. I will try. You deserve that much from me."

"You're nineteen years too late for that."

"I know."

There was no response this time. Ursa sighed, turned around, and gave Mai a nod.

When they were standing at the front door, Ursa pulling her shoes on, Mai supposed she should say something else.

"I'm sorry. Maybe this was a horrible idea."

"No," Ursa said firmly. "It was right to do this, to come here. To listen to her. Even if you hadn't brought me, Mai, I would have seen her sooner or later." She gave her a quick, strained smile. "I hope she isn't too hard on you for it."

Mai, who wasn't particularly worried about that, shrugged.

Once Ursa had disappeared back out the door, Mai made her way back upstairs. She tried the bathroom door to find it locked.

"She's gone."

"That's a relief. It would be horrible if I opened the door and found the woman I loathe on the other side of it."

Mai sighed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought her here without warning you. But she's gone, really."

Azula opened the door. She was stony-faced. Her golden eyes had all the intensity of a hawk's as she leaned back against the sink and glared at Mai. Still the only sign of her distress was the burned pink skin of her fingertips.

"Any other surprise visitors? Uncle? Zuzu? How about Father, back from the dead?"

"Uh, yeah, actually, I called the police," Mai said dryly. She saw Azula's lip curl back from her teeth and hastily spoke again. "Joking. Joking."

"Ugh. Make it up to me. Get down," Azula said.

"What?"

Azula made her meaning clear when her hands went for the zipper of her pants. She shoved them down her thighs far enough for Mai to see that her panties were red silk and black lace today. Obediently, Mai got down. The tiled floor was unpleasantly hard and cold against her knees, but it was easy enough to forget that when Azula had knotted a hand in her hair and guided Mai's mouth none-too-gently onto her.

Considering what had happened the last time she had eaten Azula out, Mai was a little surprised. But she supposed it made sense, a sort of desperate attempt to regain control.

 _Freud would have a field day,_ she thought dryly.

"Why did you bring her here?" Azula asked. She was bracing herself against the marble counter once more. Anger and bitterness flooded her voice again. "Did you think I'd appreciate that?"

Mai paused in her gentle mouthing of the cloth covering Azula's cunt to try to respond, but no sooner had a noise escaped her lips than the hand on the back of her head was forcing her deeper. Azula smelled like sweat and smoke. It was disgusting. Mai liked it.

"Rhetorical," Azula hissed from above. Mai shrugged and returned to her duties. She found what she thought was Azula's clit through the cloth and lapped at it. The nails digging into her scalp tightened, which Mai supposed meant she was doing something right.

"I had given her up for dead. God, I wish she was dead. Her and Father and Uncle and everyone else who's tried to control me." Her voice was wavering, anger and pain laced through it in equal parts. It was hard to listen. Mai's hands wound around the backs of Azula's thighs. She found taut muscle under her fingers. She pulled Azula's clit between her teeth and nibbled at it, rewarded with another hiss and fingers winding around her hair.

She managed to pull Azula's wet underwear down. She hadn't been shaving; short, dark hairs bristled against Mai's lips and she found the sensation not entirely uncomfortable. Her slit was drooling wetness, and Mai drank like a man lost in the desert.

"She just kept looking at me, like she always has, like she's above it all. So cold and gentle and saintly. She's so fucking determined to play the perfect mother. She doesn't care what I want. She never has. She's only trying so she can pretend she's still the fucking Madonna." Her voice cracked horribly. "I don't want her. I want—I want—"

Mai let her eyes drift upward. Azula was still leaning against the counter. She looked dazed, confused. Her lovely skin was interrupted by angry red blotches in her cheeks. Hopelessly beautiful, or maybe just hopeless.

She returned her attention down. She let her breath drift, warm, over Azula. When she resumed licking, it was with slow, teasing strokes. There was a low sigh from above.

"You're getting better at this," Azula breathed. Her hands tightened against Mai's scalp and she _ground_ her hips into her. It felt _good_ to have her needy and wanting. It felt good to hold a fraction of the power that Azula did whenever she was between Mai's legs.

Mai continued with almost impertinent slowness. Azula's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing else. Mai might have hoped for begging, but true to form, Azula wouldn't give in. She continued on with her monologue as if there hadn't been an interruption.

"I didn't even say what I wanted to say. I wanted to describe it to her, tell her every last thing he did to me— _fuck—_ watch her face go all pale and twisted, make her cry. But I couldn't. I looked at her and I couldn't. It hurt to look at her. Why—why did it hurt?"

When Mai looked up again, there were tears streaking Azula's cheeks. Suddenly she was glad for her state of forced muteness. Even if her mouth had been free, she wouldn't have known what to say. As it was, all she could do was nip and suck and tease, her mind now a long way away from what she was doing. It wasn't enjoyable any longer, if it had been in the beginning. It was just cold and wrong and ugly. She shouldn't have brought Ursa there. She hated seeing Azula's eyes water and spill over. She hated the trembling of her voice.

This was what she had chosen.

Azula was hot and soft around her tongue. There were still the brutal nails digging into her skull, urging her onward. Mai continued robotically, mindlessly.

"Tell me why I still care what she thinks. Tell me why I can't look her in the eye. I was supposed to be better than this. I was supposed to be stronger than this. God, Mai, _what am I doing_ —shit— _shit—_ "

Wetness flooded Mai's mouth. Azula's thighs were taut around her head. Her hips bucked ruthlessly against Mai's jaw, grounding out friction with no regard for Mai. She was pulling at her hair and it _hurt,_ until suddenly the hands were gone and Mai was free once more.

She pulled her head back and licked the remnants of Azula's release from around her lips. Her mouth was aching. Who knew so much endurance was required for cunnilingus?

Azula was slumped against the counter, looking away from her, face blank and wet. She made no move to pull her pants back up or clean herself off.

Mai tentatively stood. Her legs were uncomfortably stiff, her knees hurting from being braced against the hard floor for so long. Even with her mouth free, she had nothing to say. She just had a host of apologies that Azula wouldn't care for, a host of platitudes about human emotion _not_ being weakness that Azula would laugh away.

She fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, and offered it.

* * *

The waiting room seemed far removed from the cold sterility Mai had come to associate with doctors. There were vases overflowing with flowers, the smell of coffee rather than antiseptic, and even a small, bubbling fountain. It might have been the foyer of an office rather than a clinic, were it not for the nurses in their scrubs.

Azula was pale and motionless, staring straight ahead across the room. Mai had brought a book, but she couldn't concentrate on reading with Azula so tense beside her.

"Maybe they'll nick an artery," Azula said abruptly.

"Maybe," Mai agreed, her attention still ostensibly on the pages open before her. "But probably not."

"I wonder how often Mother wished she'd done this to me."

Mai looked up. "I doubt she ever wished that."

"Of course. She's perfect, right?"

"She's...irrelevant. Look, don't think about her right now. It'll just bother you."

"Why am I here?" Azula asked. She couldn't meet Mai's eyes. Her lower lip was red, not because of her lipstick, but because she'd bitten through the skin. "It wasn't supposed to come to this. I wasn't supposed to let it come to this."

"But here we are."

Mai was spared the necessity of any further response when a nurse approached them and beckoned for Azula to accompany her. Slowly she rose from her chair. Her motions were stiff; her face remained blank and unreadable.

"You'll be here when I come out?"

"Right here," Mai promised. Then, as both of them were walking away, she found it in herself to say one more thing, not caring that the nurse was there, not caring that another patient was sitting only a couple of chairs away. "I love you."

Azula looked back at her. She smiled, and it was beautiful. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something in return, but there was no sound, and then she was following the nurse and the moment was gone.

Mai let herself think she had understood, let herself think it had been what she wanted.

She had been sitting and reading for half an hour, not really taking in the words on the pages before her, when someone sat down next to her. She glanced up out of reflex more than anything, and she was somehow unsurprised to see the newcomer.

Ursa looked as tired and worn as when Mai had last seen her; though she was otherwise quite put-together, no impeccably unwrinkled blouse could erase the lines of her face. Perhaps the impression was simply Mai's alone, the image of Azula's mother gripping a teacup until her knuckles turned white staining her perception.

"She's—gone in?"

"Yeah, a little while ago." Mai hesitated, then charged recklessly on. "You waited until she'd be in there to come, didn't you?"

Ursa didn't deny the accusation. "I don't think seeing me would have brought her any comfort. The least I can do is be here when she comes out. And if she sends me away then, so be it."

Mai stared ahead, taking in the pattern of the carpet and the wood grain of the receptionist's desk. No, this place wasn't like a hospital. Somehow that made her hate it. All the glossy magazines and glass doors and fountains in the world didn't make a difference. It might as well have been cold and bleak and sterile. The crisp, artificial beauty of this clinic felt like a mockery of why they were there. The most beautiful facade in the world could not protect Azula or anybody else. Neat stacks of magazines were a desperate grasp at order in a chaotic world. The people whose faces were forever frozen in smiles on the front were constructs that could not exist outside of their magazines. If they were sitting where Mai was, they would be screaming.

Ursa and Mai could not save Azula. They could try and try, but she and they were not things to be stacked and organized. They were all disasters masquerading in a controllable form. They all tried to forget that their efforts meant nothing in the end.

Mai mindlessly ran her fingers along the pages of the book held in her lap.

"How have you been...coping?" she said finally.

Ursa paused a while before answering. "I thought about—ending it."

 _Join the club._ "She thinks you play at being a martyr."

"I think anything I could do would be selfish. I started it, all of it. I married him."

"You couldn't have known how it would end," Mai said, and thought of the photographs.

"Does that exonerate me?" Ursa said sharply, and then let out a long sigh. "I want to pretend it's not real. I don't want to believe it. Even now, with her in there, I would rather run. What a coward I am."

"We could always ask for a DNA sample," Mai said pitilessly. She had nothing left to spare for Ursa, even if it discomfited her to hear the woman speak thus.

Ursa fixed Mai in her piercing gaze, so like her daughter's. "What kind of monster would I be to need that to believe her?"

Mai didn't answer. She smiled a little bit and thought that maybe there was hope here after all.

After a long, heavy silence, Ursa spoke again.

"Do you think it's wrong to be here, to force myself on her? If she wants nothing to do with me, should I respect that?"

Mai stared at the door through which Azula had disappeared. She thought of her lover arched against the counter and asking desperately why she still cared.

"I don't think it's wrong yet," she said quietly. "I think we should keep trying."

The fountain bubbled. The phone rang. The world drifted on. And two people sat there, side by side, waiting for Azula.


End file.
